Theocacao: Possible Reasons for WWDC in August

Possible Reasons for WWDC in August

Now that Apple has announced WWDC will be held in August this year, everyone wants to know why. One possible conclusion is that Leopard will not be far enough along to hand out to attendees by late June. This is a certainly the most plausible reason if you have to choose one, but there are a few other factors.

Microsoft will probably be ramping up PR for Vista around fall and it's better for Apple if there isn't total silence on the Mac OS X front. My completely abitrary guess is that we'll probably see Leopard several months after Vista, putting it sometime in early 2007. Maybe. That means that a developer release in fall would hold people over a bit.

The other factor here is that Intel just today announced new Core chips
that will be out around the same time. If Apple wanted to introduce new pro hardware based on these chips, August would be a good choice. Announcing it late June would be a bit too early and the Quad G5s are apparently quite fast for the times anyway.

I can think of a few more "out there" possibilities that may or may not have anything to do with the reality which we have all agreed on.

The most simple alternative explanation might be that Apple has products it wants to announce for the school buying season and it doesn't want WWDC to trample on that. Considering this hasn't been a concern in the past, it probably doesn't matter now. A much more interesting but less likely possibility is that maybe we'll see an iPod SDK some day, and some day is after June.

Finally, there's this issue of a certain data center (or two). That, along with the various trademarks and patents that have popped up suggest that Apple is going to get into some sort of network services sooner rather than later. Is this the sort of thing that would need developer support? No way to know for sure, but Mac OS X would almost certainly be involved in some way.

Of course, I could also combine this into one mega-speculation with an iPod SDK plus mobile services, but then this would just be some sort of crazy rumor site.

Possible Reasons for WWDC in August
Posted Mar 7, 2006 — 4 comments below

Ben — Mar 08, 06 919

So WWDC is in August, is this different to other years? I don't know and would love to know what it moved from. What month is it generally held? I see a lot of sites and articles mentioning that it's been moved to August, but I can't find how it's different to other years.

I would love to see some leopard stuff come out of Apple. My strategy - if I were Apple - wait until Windows Vista is feature locked. This means that MS has stopped development on new ideas/features and will only be working on bugs and testing (this would have to be a massive task on such a mammoth project). Once Vista is locked into place, Apple springs the "you're at least a generation behind" on Microsoft once again. And there will be parties and dancing in the street and the Apple base will rejoice. Yay!

Scott Stevenson — Mar 08, 06 920

WWDC used to be around May when it was in San Jose, but has been in June since it moved to San Francisco several years ago. It's not that early August is that much later, really. A difference of slightly more than a month.

Erik J. Barzeski — Mar 08, 06 921

Kinda taking the place of Macworld Expo NY (or the old Boston) now, though those were typically in mid-July, IIRC. I only went to three of 'em.

Casey — Mar 09, 06 922

I don't know and would love to know what it moved from.

Wikipedia knows all: WWDC

* 1998, San Jose, May 11 – May 15
* 1999, San Jose, May 10 – May 14
* 2000, San Jose, May 15 – May 19
* 2001, San Jose, May 21 – May 25
* 2002, San Jose, May 6 – May 10
* 2003, San Francisco, June 23 – June 27
* 2004, San Francisco, June 28 – July 2
* 2005, San Francisco, June 6 – June 10
* 2006, San Francisco, August 7 – August 11

Comments Feed

Comments Temporarily Disabled

I had to temporarily disable comments due to spam. I'll re-enable them soon.