Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), scheduled to take place from June 7-11, 2021, will, for the second year in a row, be held entirely online.
Free for developers, WWDC21 will offer unique insight into the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, says Apple. Developers can attend virtually to learn about the new technologies, tools, and frameworks so they can build innovative apps and games. Apple also announced that this year’s Swift Student Challenge, an opportunity for young developers to demonstrate their coding skills by creating a Swift playground, is now accepting submissions.
“We love bringing our developers together each year at WWDC to learn about our latest technologies and to connect them with Apple engineers,” says Susan Prescott, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing. “We are working to make WWDC21 our biggest and best yet and are excited to offer Apple developers new tools to support them as they create apps that change the way we live, work, and play.”
WWDC21 will provide Apple’s worldwide community of more than 28 million developers, as well as the next generation of app developers, with the information and tools needed to turn their ideas into reality. This year’s conference will include announcements from the keynote and State of the Union stages, online sessions, 1:1 labs offering technical guidance, and new ways for developers to interact with Apple engineers and designers to learn about the latest frameworks and technologies.
The Swift Student Challenge invites students to create an interactive scene in a Swift playground that can be experienced within three minutes. Swift Playgrounds is an app for iPad and Mac that makes learning the Swift programming language interactive and fun. Now through April 18, students can submit their Swift playground to the Swift Student Challenge. Winners will receive exclusive WWDC21 outerwear and a customized pin set.
To support the local economy, Apple is also committing US$1 million to SJ Aspires, an education and equity initiative launched by the City of San José. Focused on enabling youth in underserved neighbourhoods to set goals and chart a path toward receiving a college education, SJ Aspires offers a performance-based scholarship program that educates students about their college and career choices and provides individual mentorship and advising as well as online tools to help reduce the barriers Black and Brown students face in accessing academic opportunities. This builds on Apple’s multi-year partnership with the City of San José and the San José Public Library Foundation in support of technology programming.
Apple will share additional program information in advance of WWDC21 through the Apple Developer app, on the Apple Developer website, and via e-mail.