Apple announces WWDC 2020 in June as a 'new online experience'
Apple's annual developer conference goes online only
Apple finally announced that its WWDC 2020 event will be in June and, unsurprisingly, the event will be held entirely online (via 9to5Mac).
In its official press release, Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller said, "The current health situation has required that we create a new WWDC 2020 format that delivers a full program with an online keynote and sessions, offering a great learning experience for our entire developer community, all around the world."
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Apple joins the ever-lengthening list of companies that have either canceled or drastically changed planned events as a result of the spreading coronavirus (which causes the COVID-19 disease ).
Apple is putting a positive spin on the move with multiple references to the fact that this allows the entire developer community to participate in the event. Apple has broadcast the keynote for a number of years now and has increasingly offered access to recorded sessions after the event, so the basic pieces should already be in place.
Apple is also committing "$1 million to local San Jose organizations to offset associated revenue loss as a result of WWDC 2020’s new online format." It's a nice gesture from Apple as the economic ramifications of all of these event cancellations on the communities could be devastating.
The exact dates for the event were not announced and they did not offer any other specifics regarding the event, simply that "Additional program information will be shared between now and June..."
While WWDC doesn't traditionally see a lot of product announcements, there is usually plenty of information to glean from the event. We definitely expect to hear more about the cursor support in iPad OS 14 and possibly some info on those ARM-based MacBooks if they are really arriving in the next year.
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Sean Riley has been covering tech professionally for over a decade now. Most of that time was as a freelancer covering varied topics including phones, wearables, tablets, smart home devices, laptops, AR, VR, mobile payments, fintech, and more. Sean is the resident mobile expert at Laptop Mag, specializing in phones and wearables, you'll find plenty of news, reviews, how-to, and opinion pieces on these subjects from him here. But Laptop Mag has also proven a perfect fit for that broad range of interests with reviews and news on the latest laptops, VR games, and computer accessories along with coverage on everything from NFTs to cybersecurity and more.