Coronavirus: Apple’s WDDC Goes Online Only

Apple has just announced that its biggest event of the year, WWDC, will be online-only as a result of the coronavirus.

WWDC is Apple’s developers conference where the latest changes to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS are previewed, giving developers insight into what to expect in the coming year. It’s not uncommon for major hardware releases to make an appearance as well. In view of the coronavirus, however, this year’s event will be an online-only event.

“We are delivering WWDC 2020 this June in an innovative way to millions of developers around the world, bringing the entire developer community together with a new experience,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “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. We will be sharing all of the details in the weeks ahead.”

“With all of the new products and technologies we’ve been working on, WWDC 2020 is going to be big,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “I look forward to our developers getting their hands on the new code and interacting in entirely new ways with the Apple engineers building the technologies and frameworks that will shape the future across all Apple platforms.”

Apple is also committing $1 million to San Jose organizations to help compensate for revenue they would normally earn as a result of the venue bringing additional business to town.