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Tech Events in 2021 Are Virtual Again
09 Apr, 2021
2 min read
Spring means tech events are around the corner. The three major developer conferences that happen are Microsoft Build, Google I/O, and Apple’s WWDC. Last year all of these conferences happened virtually, apart from Google, which skipped it altogether.
This year, the search giant is back and in the game. The virtual conferences gave each company a way to really experiment, place easter eggs in plain sight and show off their production strength – and Apple really won that round.
Here are the dates to these events this year:
Google – 18th to 20th May
Microsoft’s Build – 25th to 27th May
WWDC – 7th – 11th June
These conferences give an overall update of how they are doing, and what their plans for the coming year are; Google and Apple enjoy some jokes at each other’s expense, the usual. After the keynote, they have specific development sessions where they walk the developers through the new OS changes so everyone is on the same page.
Occasionally they announce new hardware but that’s not the main attraction of the events.
This year Google will give us updates to Android 12, and hopefully talk about their plans for the Fushia OS, Assistant skills, and more. All of this will give us significant hints to their hardware offering that may come out over the next half of the year.
Apple will use their World Wide Developer Conference to give updates about iOS, macOS, tvOS, and WatchOS, apart from hopefully giving us more information about the new computers with their in-house chips.
Microsoft’s plans with Windows OS are design overhaul, getting everyone to like Teams and work on Windows 10x. They will also talk about plans for their Edge browser and Office suite of applications.
Each conference has a media component that details these plans and gives updates. After this media event, they do smaller more targeted sessions with developers.
These events used to be expensive to attend, but the pandemic has made them virtual and therefore free, opening up to a much wider audience that can take advantage of what goes in their hallowed halls.
Developer conferences are places to network, check out the competition, and learn. When they happen virtually, people miss out on some things, but at least it is available to more people.
They also outline the industry’s trend – what each company will focus on, what their hardware offering will look like, and their long-term trends. Google has been talking about Assistant skills for three years now, whereas Apple has been talking about AR. The result has been the Google Assistant has a number of Assistant based hardware products and Apple is putting LiDar sensors in their phones and iPad.
To the casual eye, each event every year is an individual event. To the trained eye – which is all tech media and some developers – each new developmental change from the company is a sign of things to come.
We will see what that is, soon enough!
