Worldwide Developers Conference

WWDC 2005, at Moscone Center

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is a conference held annually in California by Apple Computer. The conference is primarily used by Apple to showcase its new software and technologies for developers.

In recent years the conference has been used to demonstrate and distribute preview versions of upcoming Mac OS X versions. The number of attendees varies between 2000 to 4200 developers.

The conference starts with a keynote presentation which has been delivered by Apple CEO Steve Jobs since 1998, resulting in the event becoming known as "Stevenotes".

The first WWDC was held in Monterey, California in 1983. From 1998 to 2002, WWDC was held in mid-May. From 2003 to 2005 it was held in June to better distribute Apple's show commitments. In 2006, WWDC was moved to August, possibly to allow extra preparation time before the release of the expected developer preview version of Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard", and better timing with the release of new Intel processors.

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
• 2006, San Francisco, August 7 – August 11

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 announced the rack mounted server Xserve, in 2003 with the introduction of the consumer-oriented iSight and the Power Mac G5, in 2004 with the introduction of redesigned Apple Cinema Displays, 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, and in 2006 with the release of the Xeon-based Mac Pro and Xserve.

WWDC 2006

4200 developers from 48 countries attended the event, making it the largest WWDC ever. There are 140 sessions and 100 hands-on labs for developers. There are over 1000 Apple engineers present at the event.

The retail update included reports of 17 million visits to Apple Stores. Of the 1.33 million Macs sold in the previous quarter, 50% were first time Mac buyers. US$500 million of third party software was sold through Apple stores. The growth rate for Macs was reported as faster than that of the PC market, and Apple's notebook marketshare had doubled (from 6% to 12%), which was attributed to the introduction of the MacBook laptop.

As expected, the Mac Pro was announced as a replacement to the PowerMac G5 that was previously Apple's "prosumer" desktop computer, and the last remaining PowerPC-based Mac. The Mac Pro features a baseline of two 2.0 GHz dual core Xeon (Woodcrest) processors, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive, and a 256 MB video card. An Xserve update was also announced, based as well on the dual core Xeons. Redundant power and Lights Out Management were additional product improvements to Apple's server lineup.

While certain key Mac OS X improvements were kept "close to the vest," there were 10 improvements announced for OS X in its next iteration, Leopard, including: Full 64-bit app support, Time Machine, Boot Camp, Front Row, and Photo Booth packaged with the OS, Spaces (Virtual Desktops), Spotlight enhancements, Core Animation, Universal Access enhancements, Mail enhancements, Dashboard enhancements, including Dashcode and iChat enhancements. Leopard was announced to most likely be released for sale in Spring 2007.

In addition to Leopard features that were announced, a major revision to the Mac OS X Server product was announced. Some new features in this product included: A simplified set-up process, iCal Server (based on the CalDAV standard), Teams (a set of web-based collaborative services), Spotlight Server, and Podcast Producer.

External links

• Apple's WWDC site
• Hints and Tips for WWDC visitors