It’s the time of year when folks’ minds turn to thoughts of Apple announcements. The company’s Worldwide Developers Conference is just around the corner, and its latest herald, the annual update to the WWDC iOS app, trumpeted its arrival on Wednesday.
As in previous years, the WWDC app provides a schedule of sessions taking place during the five-day conference, starting with the keynote on Monday, June 2, at 10 a.m. Pacific, and continuing all the way through to Friday afternoon. The detail view of each session provides further information, including a description, the track, and a map of the location. (As of this writing, Apple’s opted to conceal many of the sessions with cheeky names like “No Comment” and “It’s Under Wraps.”) You can mark sessions you want to hit as favorites, and view just a list of those, as well as filter events by platform, type (session or lab), and track. And should you be looking for something in particular, there’s a search function as well.
In addition, the app also contains maps for each floor of Moscone West and Yerba Buena Gardens, the site of the annual WWDC Bash. A news feed keeps attendees updated about the latest goings on at the conference—currently, it has a few reminders, info about networking, and the ability for attendees to add a Passbook pass to speed up registration.
While the app’s utility is largely limited to those who are actually attending WWDC, there’s one feature that will appeal to those who can’t make it on site: access to the session videos from the conference. The WWDC app will not only provide this year’s session videos as they arrive, but also lets you browse videos of WWDCs past, all the way back to 2011.
The WWDC app is, of course, free, and runs on iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches with iOS 7.1 or later. In order to access some parts of the app, you may need to login with your Apple Developer account.
Author: Dan Moren, Contributor
Dan has been writing about all things Apple since 2006, when he first started contributing to the MacUser blog. He's a prolific podcaster and the author of the Galactic Cold War series, including his latest, The Nova Incident.