Apple’s online-only WWDC 2020 starts June 22

Today, Apple announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) for 2020 will kick off on June 22. That's later than usual, and the company had previously let developers and press outlets know that this event will be held exclusively online.

The online-only format is in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the cancellation or virtualization of all kinds of industry events, including Mobile World Congress, Google's I/O conference, and the Game Developers Conference. The late start date might also be related.

Here's Apple's statement from marketing SVP Phil Schiller:

WWDC20 will be our biggest yet, bringing together our global developer community of more than 23 million in an unprecedented way for a week in June to learn about the future of Apple platforms... we can’t wait to meet online in June with the global developer community and share with them all of the new tools we’ve been working on to help them create even more incredible apps and services. We look forward to sharing more details about WWDC20 with everyone as we get closer to this exciting event.

Access to this year's conference will be free to all Apple developers. Videos of all the sessions, plus any related documentation, have been offered through Apple's website and apps to active developer accounts in previous years, too. It's unclear what, if anything, Apple will do differently with this conference in addition to livestreaming the sessions online and making the videos available.

But we do have one example of how Apple will fulfill an in-person tradition with something virtual. Lately, Apple has sponsored hundreds of students to attend WWDC each year. But since there's no in-person event this time, Apple is doing something different with students. Alongside today's conference date, the company announced the Swift Student Challenge.

The challenge tasks students with creating short experiences using Swift Playgrounds, Apple's iPad and Mac app for learning coding with its Swift programming language. Students have through 11:59pm PDT on May 17 to submit their projects. Winners will be selected and given prizes.

Apple Software Engineering SVP Craig Federighi gave the following statement about the Swift Student Challenge:

Students are an integral part of the Apple developer community, and last year WWDC saw attendance from more than 350 student developers spanning 37 different countries... as we look forward to WWDC20, although our gathering will be virtual this year, we want to recognize and celebrate the creative contributions of our young developers from around the world. We can’t wait to see this next generation of innovative thinkers turn their ideas into a reality through the Swift Student Challenge.

Normally, WWDC is held at San Jose McEnery Convention Center. Cancellations of events like this have had negative consequences for local economies, and to that end, Apple committed $1 million to San Jose businesses to make up for the loss of local revenue.

Apple typically announces its next major updates for its operating systems at WWDC, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS, in a keynote presentation livestreamed to viewers around the world. It then dives into more technical detail on many of the key features in those announcements in more focused, developer-only sessions. Sometimes hardware product announcements are made at WWDC as well, but not always.