Worldwide Developers Conference 1998

Worldwide Developers Conference 1998 (or WWDC '98) was a computer conference that was hosted by Apple Computer for its developers at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. It was Apple's 9th annual Worldwide Developers Conference, held from May 11 to 15, 1998.

Product announcements
The keynote address by interim CEO Steve Jobs focused on the strategy of transitioning classic Mac OS to what would become Mac OS X.

In response to developer comments about the new operating system, the big announcement at WWDC'98 was the introduction of Carbon, effectively a version of the classic Mac OS API implemented on OpenStep. Under the original Rhapsody plans, classic applications would run in sandboxed installation of the classic Mac OS, (called the "Blue Box") and have no access to the new Mac OS X features. To receive new features, such as protected memory and preemptive multitasking, developers had to rewrite applications using the "Yellow Box" API. Developer complaints about the major porting effort to what was then a shrinking market and warnings that they might simply abandon the platform, led Apple to reconsider the original plan. Carbon addressed the problem by dramatically reducing the effort needed, while exposing some of the new functions of the underlying OS.

Another major introduction at WWDC'98 was the Quartz imaging model, which replaced Display PostScript with something akin to display PDF. Although reasons for the switch were unclear at the time, Quartz also included better support for the extant QuickDraw model from the classic OS, and (as later learned) Java 2D. Supporting QuickDraw directly in the graphics model also led to a related announcement, that the Blue Box would now be invisible, integrated into the extant desktop, instead of a separate window.

Attendance
1,801 developers attended WWDC '98.