As is tradition this time of year, Apple announced the dates for its annual developer conference: June 9–13, 2025.

Apple is basically following its COVID-era playbook: pre-recorded presentations, and, for the third year, a one-day “in-person experience” the Monday of the show.

The modern WWDC is somewhat emblematic of the modern Apple: high production values, efficient, and with enough humanity and playfulness to distract us from the intricately choreographed nature of the beast.

In many ways, I miss live, in-person WWDC. I mean the whole thing, not just the one day event. It was a hellacious week for those of us working the show—and for many in Apple, a hellacious several months—but the experience cannot be matched, from the crucible of rehearsals and related preparations to the energy of a live presentation to bumping into old friends you see but once a year.

COVID restrictions made preparations somewhat easier, as pre-recorded videos can be more easily honed: script every word, read off a teleprompter, repeat until perfect, and edit as necessary. Live presentations required as much as half-a-dozen rehearsals, and the speaker might still get nervous up on stage and flub a line or a demo.

And I loved helping speakers craft and hone their presentations. It was, and remains, one of the highlights of my job.

The other part of WWDC I miss dearly is the in-person labs. Once the exclusive domain of DTS, these labs were expanded to include all of engineering. Eventually, once videos were easily available for streaming on demand, the labs became the big draw for many developers. There’s nothing like a ten-minute in-person conversation with an Apple engineer to unblock a stalled project.

Each year, I eagerly anticipated my role as a lab “concierge”—ensuring every developer met with the right engineer (or App Reviewer or Evangelist) while also acting as an escalation point for developer complaints—even though it meant “performing” an extremely extroverted version of myself. It allowed me to meet amazing developers and connect them with equally amazing Apple people to solve their pressing issues. It was a deeply fulfilling week.

(But goodness, was I emotionally—and physically!—drained at the end of that week! I usually needed at least the weekend, if not the full week after, to refill my battery. Still, totally worth it.)

Pre-COVID, only the 4,000–5,000 in-person attendees benefited from labs. After COVID, and the creation of a virtual lab experience, thousands of developers from around the world were able to meet with DTS and other Apple engineers. That was a huge win for the developer community, expanding who benefited from these conversations. Still, while we extended our reach, I can’t help but feel we lost some of the humanity. Labs became less fluid and more transactional. Gone missing was the ability to pull in a colleague, or walk someone over to another lab, or share the learning experience with other developers. The community aspect of in-person labs dissipated online.

And I definitely missed the random in-person developer conversations I was fortunate enough to have.

Apple is again hosting a special event at Apple Park on “opening day.” In years past, attending WWDC was an experience for the privileged few. You had to be wealthy enough, employed enough, or simply fortunate enough to get in, and if you were outside of the US, it was an additional burden, even in the best of times. During COVID, these special events were further limited to those who were healthy enough—or foolish enough, depending on your perspective—to brave a brush with COVID and lucky enough to get picked in the “random selection process.”

Regardless, WWDC is a career highlight for many a developer.

This year, attending WWDC from outside the United States is a much scarier proposition considering the sharp authoritarian turn this country has taken, and the very real threat of visitors being detained for weeks, deported, or illegally rendered to a hostile country.

Many developers coming to the US for WWDC must first receive a visa letter from Apple “inviting” them. Historically, those invitations and visas were routine (except for some countries, like China), and there was seldom a safety concern for those visa recipients.

Today, not so much. I’m confident that inside Apple, there are conversations (or at least, people trying to have conversations) about the safety concerns—and the ethics—of issuing those visa letters. You can bet your bottom dollar Apple lawyers and public relations folks are busily gaming out scenarios for what to do if a developer “invited” by Apple is held at the border, or worse.

Apple will not publicly comment on this, of course. How can a $3 trillion US-based multinational company possibly express concern about the eroding civil liberties of their home country?

As an individual citizen of the United States, though, I cannot in good conscience recommend a developer come here for WWDC. It’s simply not worth taking the risk that some overzealous border control or ICE agent will consider you a threat. No conference is worth that.

There is something Apple could do to ease any developer anxiety about traveling to the US, while reducing the potentially overwhelming sense of FOMO that may drive many developers to chance it anyway.

Instead of making Apple Park the center of the developer universe, hold events in any of the many cities where Apple has a presence. Battersea in London, for example. Outside of the US, Apple has a dozen and a half Developer Academies in five countries and Developer Centers in three more.

These locations already host developer events. Do something special for WWDC. Commission unique t-shirts and pins for each location. Have senior executives show up and take selfies. Go wild!

With no shortage of stunning spaces in which to host developers, Apple could make WWDC a truly global event. And it would quietly demonstrate to developers that Apple understands the moment we’re in.