Apple just announced that its Worldwide Developers Conference is going to move back to San Jose after a long run at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It’s going to happen on June 5-9, 2017 and registrations will open on March 27.
Why is Apple leaving San Francisco for the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose? San Francisco and Apple have changed quite a lot for the past decade. Everything has become a lot more expensive in San Francisco, and Apple has grown dramatically. So it makes sense to move to a quieter city.
San Jose provides the advantage that it is really close to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. There will be a thousand Apple engineers talking with the Apple developer community and speaking on stage about changes in APIs, SDKs and operating systems. So it’s going to be much more convenient for Apple.
In addition to that, it has become very expensive for an independent developer to spend the week in San Francisco for WWDC. Given the size of the conference and all the side events, hotel rooms had become very expensive. If you couldn’t spend thousands of dollars just for a week, you simply had to stay at home and watch the live streams.
Jim Dalrymple interviewed Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller about the move. He said that the conference will be roughly the same size with around 5,000 developers and the same ticket price ($1,599).
So let’s see if WWDC becomes more accessible with this move. This is going to be a transition year as I’m sure many side events are still going to happen in San Francisco because you have to reserve an event space very early.
Apple isn’t the only company moving away from San Francisco with its developer conferences. Facebook also announced that F8 2017 will take place at the McEnery Convention in San Jose (yes, the exact same convention center). Google I/O takes place in Mountain View, and Microsoft Build is obviously in Seattle.
Like in recent years, developers will be able to register for a WWDC ticket on March 27. There will then be a lottery to select the attendees as there are simply too much demand for the event. And if you’re not a developer, get ready for the WWDC keynote. Apple usually unveils many software innovation, such as new versions of iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS. Fasten your seatbelt and get ready for iOS 11!
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