Apple has just posted its official dates for Worldwide Developers Conference 2014, and the annual event will take place June 2 through June 6 this year. The registration isn’t first-come first-serve this time around, and instead will take place using random selection, as Google is doing with I/O. Interested devs can sign up to be included in random selection between now and April 7 at 10 AM PT.
The event is at Moscone West in San Francisco, as usual, and will cover a range of topics around iOS and OS X development. This year, it’ll boast over 100 technical sessions, led by over 1,000 actual Apple engineers. For the first time, Apple is also partnering with the National Center for Women & Information Technology to help encourage more women to become coders and engineers via scholarships and other support programs.
Sessions won’t be streamed as they will be at I/O, but the ‘State of the Union’ address on Monday and the Apple Design Awards will be, and videos of all sessions will be posted to Apple’s dedicated developer website after they take place, too.
This is the first time Apple has used a lottery system instead of just letting tickets be sold to the first people to sign up for them once ticket sales open. That first-come, first-serve system has become increasingly untenable over the years, as tickets have sold out faster and faster thanks to the growing ranks of iOS developers, and website issues resulting from the surge in server traffic as people rush to try to get on the list. This new system means that developers will have a full four days to express their interest. Random selection should help alleviate some hurt feelings, and seems much more fair overall. Tickets for last year’s event sold out in under two minutes, meaning developers had a very narrow window to try their luck.
Developing…