Worldwide Developers Conference

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is an annual trade show for Apple developers. Commonly abbreviated to "WWDC", typically takes place in Northern California.

The attendee numbers have varied between roughly 2000 - 3500 developers in recent years. 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 conference starts off with a keynote. Since 1998, it has always been held by CEO Steve Jobs. But when Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, current CEO of Apple Inc. Tim Cook, began to take Steve Jobs place of holding the WWDC's.

The first WWDC was held in Monterey, CA in 1983. See Worldwide Developers Conference 1983.

Locations and dates of recent WWDCs:
 * 1998: San Jose, California, USA, May 11 - May 15
 * See: Worldwide Developers Conference 1998
 * 1999: San Jose, California, USA, May 10 - May 14
 * See: Worldwide Developers Conference 1999
 * 2000: San Jose, California, USA, May 15 - May 19
 * See: Worldwide Developers Conference 2000
 * 2001: San Jose, California, USA, May 21 - May 25
 * See: Worldwide Developers Conference 2001
 * 2002: San Jose, California, USA, May 6 - May 10
 * See: Worldwide Developers Conference 2002
 * 2003: San Francisco, California, USA, June 23 - June 27
 * See: Worldwide Developers Conference 2003
 * 2004: San Francisco, California, USA, June 28 - July 2
 * See: Worldwide Developers Conference 2004
 * 2005: San Francisco, California, USA, June 6 - June 10
 * See: Worldwide Developers Conference 2005

Broadened Scope
In 2003, WWDC was merged with another Apple trade show called QuickTime Expo. 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 is now webcasting 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, and in 2003, introducing the consumer-oriented iSight.

Trivia

 * Starting with WWDC 2012, Apple changed the requirement of attendees being from 18 year old and older, to 13 years old and older.