I have been to a few of the Apple World Wide Developer conferences. I remember well, when Apple was small that I got an invite as part of the reseller advisory council. I still have my VIP badge on my wall here at the office. We haven’t been invited lately and the conference certainly has grown. But back in the days when Apple hadn’t yet introduced the iPhone, the conference was a spotlight for Apple software, hardware and the scene of some very significant announcements.
A good indication of why WWDC has become so popular is that since 2008 when the App Store was introduced at WWDC, Apple has paid developers over $70 Billion in the 10 years. That means Apple has probably seen revenue of about $100 Billion since they take a 30% cut. This is great for developers and it has dramatically stimulated software development.
The App Store was significant also because it marked a change in how software was distributed. It is hard to find any boxed software these days but before the App Store most software was sold in boxes with disks. Even Apple’s operating system software was distributed in that manner. We used to give away Ben & Jerry’s coupons with each upgrade. Now it is all electronic, faster and better for the environment, too.
Even before that 2008 announcements big changes were announced at WWDC. Back in 2005 it was the very dramatic announcement that Apple would be moving to the Intel platform from Power PC. There were about 3800 attendees at that event. These days the event holds 5000 developers and is sold out instantly. There is even a lottery and scholarships to get tickets.
The next year in 2006, the Mac Pro was announced and Mac OS X Leopard was shown with some of the amazing operating system features we take for granted now, like Time Machine, Boot Camp, Spaces and Spotlight.
While concentrating on software and MacOS and iOS there have been a long list of hardware announced at the conference including the Mac Pro (2 times), Apple Cinema Displays, upgrades to MacBook Pros and iPhones.
Last year it was HomeKit, Swift and a slew of updates to MacOS, iOS, WatchOS and tvOS. What are we likely to see this year? Well, as usual I have to say I have absolutely no inside information but my crystal ball says we will again see some amazing enhancements to the operating systems for our devices. I think that Siri may take center stage with HomeKit enhancements and perhaps that Alexa competitor(killer?). I think we may see a significant enhancement or two to tvOS with hopefully more signs if healing between Apple and Amazon with the Amazon app coming to Apple TV.
What hardware might we see? The past several years have all had rumors of significant hardware upgrades coming at WWDC only to see none actually happening. Those hardware upgrades occurred later in the year. This year might be different with new Macs and iPads being rumored as well as other peripherals. On the other hand, Apple has plenty to talk about just talking software so don’t be too disappointed if there are no hardware announcements.
WWDC 2017 will be held on June 5 to June 9, 2017 at the San Jose Convention Center, in San Jose, California, which will be the first time since 2002 that the conference will be held in the city. You can watch the keynote Monday on your Apple TV.