Worldwide Developers Conference 2021

Worldwide Developers Conference 2021 (or WWDC 2021 or WWDC21) is the 32nd annual computer conference that was hosted by Apple Inc. It began on June 7, 2021, with online sessions for registered members of the Apple Developer program from June 8 to 11. This year's tagline was "Glow and behold."

New announcements
Apple CEO Tim Cook opened the keynote event at the conference, as he had done since WWDC 2012. New operating system announcements included iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey (version 12), presented by Senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi. VP of Technology Kevin Lynch introduced watchOS 8. Other new announcements included tvOS 15 and Xcode Cloud. Live Text and Spatial audio were among the new discussed features.

Scheduled events

 * Apple Keynote
 * June 7, 10 a.m. PDT


 * Platforms State of the Union
 * June 7, 2 p.m. PDT


 * Apple Design Awards
 * June 10, 2 p.m. PDT


 * Pavilions
 * June 8-11: Over 200 in-depth sessions will be organized into "Pavilions" to help developers easily find relevant labs and activities by topic.


 * Swift Student Challenge
 * June 1: The submission period for the Swift Student Challenge, Apple's annual scholarship event, was open from March 30 to April 18, 2021. The winners were announced on June 1st.

Background
WWDC 2020 was the first Worldwide Developers Conference to be held virtually in an online format, due to the COVID-19 outbreak that temporarily closed all of Apple's retail stores at various times around the world. Despite improvements in 2021, ongoing pandemic conditions required the conference to be held online again, instead of in person within the Silicon Valley area.

Articles

 * WWDC 2021: when is it happening, and what to expect from Apple’s show by James Rogerson at TechRadar (2021-03-30)