Apple's WWDC, the annual World Wide Developers' Conference that the company hosts each year to show off its new software, is not set to take place in California any more.
Instead of its usual spot of San Jose, the June event will happen online only, for reasons that are implicitly related to the coronavirus pandemic that has seen authorities advise against meetings of 1,000 people or more. This news was announced in the Apple newsroom, with 'the current health situation' alluded to as the reason for the change.
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At the event, we are expecting Apple to unveil iOS 14, watchOS 7, macOS 10.16, an update to iPadOS and more of its latest software, and it's also possible we'll see the iPhone SE 2 and new iPad Pro 2020 there as well, if not before.
The WWDC 2020 presentations will now be replaced with online livestreams, and seeing as the vast majority of WWDC viewers were doing so via Apple's livestreams anyway, this won't make a huge difference for many people.
In fact, perhaps the online event will now be tailored more to the majority of viewers, who are sitting behind a computer or TV rather than in front of the Apple stage.
This isn't the only tech event that's felt the ramifications of coronavirus – in fact, many tech companies have cancelled, postponed or altered launch events, with the majority of them becoming online-only.
Still, the show must go on, and coronavirus won't affect software development as much as it will hardware, a lot of which is made in China. So while the iPhone 9 might be delayed (as rumors suggest), we'd still expect iOS 14 and macOS 10.16 to come out on schedule.
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