Thursday, November 7, 2024
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Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference coming (virtually) June 7-11

Apple has announced that it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 7 through 11, in an all-online format for the second year in a row due to the COVID pandemic.

Free for all developers, WWDC21 will offer insight into the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. 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.

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.

Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing, says the company will continue its long-standing tradition of supporting students who love to code with this year’s Swift Student Challenge, inviting them 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 designed to make 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 pin set. For more information, visit the Swift Student Challenge website.

To support the local economy, even while WWDC21 is hosted online and as part of its US$100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative, Apple says it’s committing $1 million to SJ Aspires, an education and equity initiative launched by the City of San José. Focused on enabling youth in underserved neighborhoods 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.”

Apple will share additional program information in advance of WWDC21 through the Apple Developer app, on the Apple Developer website, and via email.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.