WWDC June 7-11: heavy on iPhone/iPad, light on Mac

Apple has, at least a month later than usual, announced the dates for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. WWDC 2010 kicks off on June 7—five days of iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS X developer goodness at San Francisco’s Moscone West conference center.

In addition to the usual hobnobbing among developers and Apple engineers, this year’s WWDC will feature training sessions and labs that focus on five different areas:

Application Frameworks covers all the built-in frameworks that developers can easily leverage to build applications, such as Core Animation and Core Data. It will also cover new iPhone OS 4 frameworks like multitasking services, Game Center, Event Kit, and the new Core Location features.
Core OS will cover under-the-hood stuff like networking, I/O Kit drivers, security, and optimizing multitasking.
Developer Tools covers getting the most out of Xcode, Interface Builder, Instruments, and advanced techniques with Objective-C 2.0.
Graphics and Media touches on OpenGL, OpenGL ES, AV frameworks, editing media, game design, and HTTP Live Streaming.
Internet and Web will focus on tools for developing and deploying Web-based apps, including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, using Safari’s developer tools, Dashcode, and adding touch and gesture detection for mobile Web apps.

While there will be plenty of sessions focusing on development on Mac OS X, there’s a clear indication that WWDC this year will focus heavily on iPhone OS, with many sessions geared towards development for iPhone and iPad. The annual Apple Design Awards won’t even be given for Mac apps this year; instead, five awards will be given to iPhone apps and five to iPad apps.

Though there has been no announcement about who will be there, WWDC usually kicks off with a keynote on Monday. We expect that Apple will unveil the next iteration of iPhone hardware then, though we aren’t likely to be very surprised by what is shown. Rumors have suggested the new hardware will be available around June 22.

WWDC costs $1,599 to attend, not counting flights or hotel accommodations for developers that come from all over the world. Despite the price, the event has sold out the previous two years.