Apple's WWDC history

the first WWDC event happened 15 years ago, and although there was a severe lack of iPhone flavoured tech announced there, we only had to wait 12 years until the first iPhone was announced at Macword 2007.

So what happened following the iPhone's announcement?

WWDC 2007
Web Apps was announced. The announcement meant that budding app developers could simply just go ahead and write apps without tools or intervention from Apple.

WWDC 2008
Approximately six million handsets were sold between WWDC 2007 and 2008.

The next iteration of the iPhone was announced at WWDC 2008 too. Along with 3G, GPS and a new black or white plastic casing, iPhone users across the world rejoiced at the sight of a flush headphone jack. Despite it only being a small tweak, it seemed Apple was finally starting to listen to user qualms.

The Apple App Store was also released in 2008. With the SDK made available to app developers, within months the platform was awash with bubble wrap popping apps and the slightly annoying fart machine novelty downloads.

The faltering launch of MobileMe, the online subscription service for both mobile and Mac device, also featured at WWDC 2008.

WWDC 2009
As iPhone sales grew to a whopping 20 million, another year passed for Apple with its dominance in the smartphone market increasing.

Although Steve Jobs was too ill to present at WWDC, OS 3.0 was revealed to the tech world. Dropping support for the original iPhone, Apple finally supplied users with the much needed copy and paste feature as well as MMS.

Just like the previous year, with a new version of the iPhone’s OS revealed Apple uncovered the all new improved iPhone – the 3GS.

WWDC 2011
With tickets for WWDC 2010 selling out in eight days, and a very public spat between Apple and Gizmodo, who managed to buy a lost prototype iPhone 4, things were hotting up in the run up to the event.

Of course it was no surprise that the iPhone 4 was coming. With the design sneakily unveiled by Gizmodo, it left Apple to wow us with the undercover specs of the device. 

Jobs returned to the WWDC at the Moscone West stage to a standing ovation from the audience, after recovering from liver transplant surgery.

With a new retina display that put the 3GS screen to shame, Apple claimed that having an even higher resolution screen would apparently have no effect on the image quality to a human eye as the maximum potential had already been met.

A processor bump was included with the new Apple designed A4 chip, which included an improved graphics engine to match up to the new high-res screen.

The update also incorporated a 3-axis gyroscope that would allow for an improved game and app experience.

The device’s camera was also improved allowing for Apple to introduce two new apps – Facetime and iMovie for iOS devices, with the latter providing a platform for users to easily edit and publish video footage within seconds.

Along with the new iPhone, Jobs announced the renaming of iPhone OS to simply iOS to incorporate the iPad and iPod Touch devices.

This brings us today with the WWDC 2011 just around the corner. Will this year’s conference take the usual format of a new release of iOS and new iPhone? Perhaps no iPhone today but lets just wait to see what Apple have up its sleeve.