It’s official: Apple will hold its major developer conference (WWDC) from June 6 to 10, 2022 entirely online. An unmissable event to discover the future novelties of the apple brand.
Apple announced the dates for its next developer conference, the Worldwide Developers Conference. Unsurprisingly, it will therefore be from the first Monday of June as every year. Even if the WWDC (which friends sometimes call “deub deub” because of the two Ws that are pronounced in English “deubeuliou”) is therefore primarily aimed at creators of applications for all of the brand’s devices, it is also a mine of information for the entire community of customers and fans of the brand, because it is during this event that new versions of all operating systems are announced and presented: iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The biggest announcements are reserved for the opening conference, the famous keynote. With probably in ambush this year, the last Mac model to make its transition to Apple Silicon’s “house” processors.
Note that for the third consecutive year, this WWDC takes place entirely online: in other words, no keynote broadcast live while the various Apple bosses follow one another on stage. We will therefore be entitled to a pre-recorded video presentation that the whole world will be able to watch at the same time via the Internet (see below). A small change all the same: Apple has announced that a selection of developers and students will be present on site, in the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple’s headquarters, to watch the same film on the big screen. The day of June 6 will be dedicated to them and they will be able to see and perhaps test on site some of the new features announced. Among the students present, some will receive a reward as part of the Swift Student Challenge, which for three years has allowed Apple to highlight young developers of applications designed in Swift, its programming language.
When is WWDC 2022?
Everyone is impatiently awaiting the new features announced during the opening conference, the keynote, which will take place on Monday, June 6 at 7 p.m. French time. But we must not forget that WWDC actually lasts five days, from Monday June 6 to Friday June 10, 2022. The conferences on the following days are of less interest to the general public because they are reserved for technical details, which are very important for developers so that their applications make the most of new operating system functions and any new machines announced during the keynote (see below). Before the health crisis, only the keynote was broadcast publicly, while the conferences of the following days were reserved for people who made the trip to get there, in California. Since WWDC is entirely conducted remotely, all conferences are accessible. A wealth of information… but also dozens of hours to spend in front of your screen if you want to watch everything!
The easiest way to watch the Worldwide Developers Conference opening keynote is to go to Apple’s YouTube page at youtube.com/apple. From a few days before the event, the home page will announce the date and time of the event. You can even start viewing without waiting: but of course, you won’t see anything before the appointed time! That said, each time, thousands of people open the YouTube page in advance to be sure not to miss the start. And as we approach 7 p.m., the number of spectators increases. Will you be part of it? Note that you can activate the subtitles in French.
Of course, you can also go to the Apple site (apple.com/fr) whose home page will give you direct access to the broadcast video of the event. And if you are also interested in the conferences of the following days, then you will have to go to the site dedicated to developers, at the address developer.apple.com/fr. By June 6, do not hesitate to go there: you will find a rich catalog of videos in all areas of development.
What announcements are expected from WWDC 2022?
As always, rumors are rife ahead of the D-Day outcome of the Apple Developer Conference opening keynote. As usual Apple should announce the new versions of all its operating systems: iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13 (and the name that will succeed the current Monterey), watchOS 8, and tvOS 16. Very soon following the presentation, the first beta versions will be available for developers to install and test. A few weeks later, a so-called public beta version is then offered to anyone who wants to. Please note, this is a version to be used at your own risk!
It’s not uncommon for WWDC to also be an opportunity for Apple to announce new devices. It is thus expected this year that the veil will be lifted on the very last machine not to have yet made the transition to Apple’s “house” processors, the Mac Pro. Something quite rare, Apple even referred to it during the March 8, 2022 event which announced the very latest Mac Studios (read our article Mac Studio: a monster of power for creative people). John Ternus Vice President in charge of hardware had dropped this short sentence: “Our transition is almost complete, with the exception of a very last product, the Mac Pro. But that’s for another time”. So it will probably be June 6th. We still know almost nothing regarding this new very high-end which will have the heavy task of surpassing the already superlative Mac Studio in power. Perhaps it will be equipped with two M1 Ultra processors, themselves already composed of two M1 Max processors. Will the new Mac Pro also differ from the Mac Studio in internal expansion capabilities, like the current Intel Mac Pro? So far, no response. In any case, even if this new Mac Pro is presented at WWDC, we should not expect immediate availability, but rather towards the end of the year. Those with the biggest power needs will have to be patient.
The exceptional power that we expected next Mac Pro should especially interest the creators of 3D animation bound for the worlds in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). We know that Apple has been working on a VR/AR helmet or glasses project for a long time. Perhaps WWDC 2022 will be an opportunity for Apple to show a little more on the subject, even if for the moment nothing is less certain.
