Apple Is Behind On Releasing This Year's WWDC Schedule - What Does This Mean?
May 19, 2011
Apple's 2011 Worldwide Developer conference will be taking place from June 6-10 this year, and while Apple announced it way in advance (compared to last year), some developers are slowly getting anxious. Indeed, we're now just 18 days away from the beginning of the conference (and its traditional keynote), and Apple still hasn't released the detailed schedule. That is, the detailed program of all the sessions that will take place, their locations and topics. As you can see from our graph above (click to enlarge), this is highly unusual.
Of course, the developers who reached out to us about this are mainly annoyed because this is making it difficult for them to organize and schedule the many events and parties that surround the conference. There is also the fact that we'll supposedly learn about "the future of iOS and Mac OS ®, including exciting demonstrations of the new kinds of apps that developers can build using Apple’s advanced frameworks." This has everyone excited as to what Apple will be showing to those who make iOS so great.
Yet, the delay may be very telling on what we're going to see.
How to explain this delay? A: The changes Apple is planning to announce are so big that they can't release their schedule without revealing their plans. B: Apple is scrambling to pull off their plans in time. C: Apple is falling apart. D: Nothing to see here.
Case A is very enticing, but Apple has always worked around releasing a schedule without revealing its plans in the past. Every year, a few sessions are simply described as "to be announced" until Apple reveals the new feature or API the session will be focusing on. Possibly, this means that what Apple is going to unveil is so big that they must keep everything under wraps. Maybe this is a major overhaul of its development environment or a whole new development language. Even better, maybe the iCloud will change so many things that most sessions will be affected?
Case B: Apple isn't sure if this major change will be ready by June. This is also a very enticing possibility. Not to mention it follows the Apple myth that everything can change until the last minute under Steve Jobs. More precisely, Apple is hoping to schedule the WWDC around some major change, but might still go with a Plan B in case they don't meet the deadline. Who knows, maybe the North Carolina data center isn't quite ready to support the 130 million iOS users?
Case C is the negative approach. Maybe now that Steve isn't around every day, Apple is having a tough time preparing for an event of such magnitude. The sessions are not ready three weeks before the conference and Apple is simply falling apart.
Case D is, let's face it, the most likely one. That is, that Apple has the schedule, and will reveal it whenever it pleases. There is nothing major happening in June and all this buzz is about nothing.
We've contacted Apple, and their developer relations representative, who wasn't able to give us any more details at the moment.
What do you think?
