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The conference is held once a year in California. The attendee numbers have varied between roughly 2000 - 3500 developers in recent years. It is Apple's chance to introduce new technologies to its developers, and has been used in recent years to demonstrate and distribute preview versions of upcoming Mac OS X versions.

The conference starts off with a keynote. Since 1998, it has always been held by CEO Steve Jobs.

The first WWDC was held in Monterey, CA in 1983.

Locations and dates of recent WWDCs:

• 1998, San Jose, May 11 - May 15
• 1999, San Jose, May 10 - May 14
• 2000, San Jose, May 15 - May 19May 19 is the 139th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (140th in leap years). There are 226 days remaining. Events 1535 French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with 3 ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona's 2 s
• 20012001 is a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar), and also: The International Year of the Volunteer The United Nations Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations Events January January 1 A black monolith measuring approximately nine feet tall ap, San Jose, May 21May 21 is the 141st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (142nd in leap years). There are 224 days remaining. Events 996 Sixteen year old Otto III is crowned Holy Roman Emperor. 1674 John Sobieski is elected by the nobility to be the King of Poland. - May 25May 25 is the 145th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (146th in leap years). There are 220 days remaining. Events 1085 Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain back from the Moors. 1420 Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Ch
• 2002, San Jose, May 6 - May 10
• 2003, San Francisco, June 23 - June 27
• 2004, San Francisco, June 28 - July 2

1 Broadened Scope

In 2003, WWDC was merged with another Apple trade show called QuickTime Expo . The number of QuickTime sessions was increased, and the Apple Design Awards were joined by Apple Design Awards for QuickTime Content . At the same time, more enterprise oriented content was added, focusing a lot on the Xserve and Mac OS X Server operating system.

All attendees have to sign a non-disclosure agreement covering the sessions and other material handed out at WWDC. In the past, the keynote was also covered by the NDA, but Apple is now webcasting the keynote address to an audience much wider than just developers. It used to be that WWDC was not a place for hardware announcements, but Apple deviated from that principle in 2002 when it announcing the rack mounted server Xserve, and in 2003, introducing the consumer-oriented iSight.