Worldwide Developers Conference
|
|
WWDC_2005.jpg
The Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is an annual trade show for Apple developers.
The conference is held once a year in California. It is Apple's chance to introduce new technologies to its developers, and has been used in recent years to demonstrate and distribute preview versions of upcoming Mac OS X versions. The attendee numbers have varied between roughly 2000 - 3500 developers in recent years.
The conference starts off with a keynote presentation. Since 1998, it has always been given by CEO Steve Jobs.
The first WWDC was held in Monterey, California in 1983. Most WWDCs to date have been held in mid-May, but since 2003 they have been held in June to spread out Apple's show commitments.
Locations and dates of recent WWDCs:
- 1998, San Jose, May 11 - May 15
- 1999, San Jose, May 10 - May 14
- 2000, San Jose, May 15 - May 19
- 2001, San Jose, May 21 - May 25
- 2002, San Jose, May 6 - May 10
- 2003, San Francisco, June 23 - June 27
- 2004, San Francisco, June 28 - July 2
- 2005, San Francisco, June 6 - June 10
Broadened scope
In 2003, WWDC was merged with another Apple trade show called QuickTime Live. The number of QuickTime sessions was increased, and the Apple Design Awards were joined by Apple Design Awards for QuickTime Content. At the same time, more enterprise oriented content was added, focusing a lot on the Xserve and Mac OS X Server operating system.
All attendees have to sign a non-disclosure agreement covering the sessions and other material handed out at WWDC. In the past, the keynote was also covered by the NDA, but Apple in recent years has webcast the keynote address to an audience much wider than just developers. It used to be that WWDC was not a place for hardware announcements, but Apple deviated from that principle in 2002 when it announcing the rack mounted server Xserve, in 2003 with the introduction of the consumer-oriented iSight, and in 2005, when an announcement was made that Apple Computer would start the transition of their computers from IBM's PowerPC microprocessor line to Intel's line of x86 processors.
External link
- Apple's WWDC site (http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/)de:Worldwide Developers Conference