Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Apple is moving its Worldwide Developers Conference 2020 (WWDC20) to virtual space for the first time, and it will be free for developers, which is yet another first.
The event will be streamed in both the Apple Developer app and on the Apple Developer website.
“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”, said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “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.”
In addition to announcing the date for its WWDC20, Apple also opened up submissions for the Swift Student Challenge. Apple describes it as "an opportunity for student developers to showcase their love of coding by creating their own Swift playground".
Swift Playgrounds is Apple's app for iPad and Mac that brings an interactive way to learn Swift programming language. Student developers can submit to the Swift Student Challenge on May 17th by creating an interactive scene in a Swift playground that can be experienced within three minutes. Winners will be getting an exclusive WWDC20 jacket and pin set.
“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,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “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.”
