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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 3500 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 will be held two months later in August, possibly to allow extra preparation time before the release of the expected developer preview version of Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard".
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, 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 links
Apple Computer | Computer conferences
Worldwide Developers Conference | Worldwide Developers Conference
"Worldwide Developers Conference"