The Macoun Developers Conference is a conference held annually since 2007 in Frankfurt am Main by Macoun GbR. It is Europe's biggest conference focused on Apple systems and is held in German.

While the event is organized by a single-purpose company, most of the work is done by a community on a pro-bono basis. Chris Hauser and Thomas Biedorf, founders of Macoun GbR, started the conference to allow European developers that cannot attend Apple's WWDC to have a "small WWDC".

The number of attendees grew from initially 200 to around 450, with a maximum of 507 in 2016. The location, a youth hostel (“Haus der Jugend”), limits the number of attendees to 500. During the first ten years, 99 speakers have held more than 200 talks at Macoun.

The conference name "Macoun" is derived from the apple of the same name."Von Äpfeln und auch von Kirschen", iX, 07. Oktober 2011"Macoun 2012: GIGA auf der Entwicklerkonferenz", GIGA TV, 26. Oktober 2012 Having "#Macoun" as official hashtag has led to confusion for American fruit-lovers on social media.

Topics

The conference, dubbed by the press as "German alternative to WWDC""Macoun 2015: Mac- und iOS-Entwickler auf der deutschen Alternative zur WWDC", Heise Newsticker, 27. Oktober 2015 is a communication platform for developers on the Apple platform.

The conference values the direct exchange between developers, talks featuring latest technical topics,Apple-Entwickler: Konferenz Macoun 2014 lockt Hunderte Besucher, Heise, 29. September 2014"Gesten auf dem Desktop," Mac & i, 9. Oktober 2013 problems around software development,"Threads und die Tücken," Mac & i, 29. September 2014 best practices,"Handschrifterkennung leicht gemacht," Mac&i, 31. Oktober 2012 and topics around quality assurance."Syncen ohne iCloud," Mac & i, 31. Oktober 2012

Besides talks in up to three concurrent sessions, Macoun has workshops, exhibitions (Digital Retro Park’s Apple exhibition being the most notable),"Macoun 2014: iOS 8, Yosemite und Swift - Bericht von der wichtigsten deutschen Entwicklerkonferenz", Mac & i, 29. September 2014 panels, and a experts group similar to WWDC labs (called Werkstatt)."Macoun 2012 - Bericht von der Mac- und iOS-Entwicklerkonferenz", Mac & i, 31. Oktober 2012

Speakers

The conference does not have paid speakers but nonetheless the list of speakers contains some widely known names such as Andy Abgottspon,Video: Visuelle Gestenerkennung @ Macoun 2011Video: Grundlagen der Spieleentwicklung @ Macoun 2012That was Macoun 2013 Chris Eidhof,Chris Eidhof, 2013 - A year in review Max Seelemann (Winner of Apple Design Awards 2016), Ortwin Gentz (Where To?), Thomas Tempelmann (FCopy, Tempelmon, ...), Uli Kusterer (Uli's Moose) and others.

History

+ Timeline of events Dates Attendees Focus List of talks, material October 25, 2008 206"Macoun: Entwicklerkonferenz rund um Mac OS X und iPhone", Heise Developer, 26. August 2009 The first Macoun conference focused on developer tools and technical topics. The then newly released iPhone SDK was of general interest. September 26, 2009"Macoun: Entwicklerkonferenz rund um Mac OS X und iPhone", Heise Developer, 26. August 2009 291 iPhone OS was still a major topic but the conference widened to more general topics such as UI testing, data serialization and aspectoriented programming. October 2–3, 2010 302 In 2010 the wider range of topics continued and with 3D-printing, the first talk about building custom hardware was given. October 1–2, 2011"Macoun 2011", Mac & i, 12. Oktober 2011 438 In 2011 “living as a developer” got some attention with talks about being/becoming an independent developer and about being an intern at Apple. October 27–28, 2012"Macoun 2012" in Mac & i, Heft 8, S. 174 467 Starting 2012, Macoun had its own conference App in the iTunes App Store. October 5–6, 2013 454"Macoun 2013", Mac & i, 9. Oktober 2013 In 2013 the topics continued to cover a wide range from low level talks (ARM-Assembler) to high level architecture talks. Talks related to hardware development had their time as well as a retrospective on a successful app development. September 27–28, 2014 411"Apple-Entwickler: Konferenz Macoun 2014 lockt Hunderte Besucher", Heise Newsticker, 29. September 2014"Macoun 2014: iOS 8, Yosemite und Swift", Mac & i, 29. September 2014 WWDC 2014's Swift release made Swift one of the most important topics at Macoun 2014. October 24–25, 2015"Macoun 2015: Mac- und iOS-Entwickler auf der deutschen Alternative zur WWDC", Heise Newsticker, 27. Oktober 2015 474 Swift still was a big topic in 2015 but developing for watchOS and tvOS also received much attention."Macoun 2015: Apple, Apps und Swift", Mac&i, 26. Oktober 2015 October 1–2, 2016"Macoun 2016: Entwicklerkonferenz zu Cocoa, Swift und Co", Heise Mac & i, 5. Oktober 2016 507Keynote Macoun 2017 In 2016, Apple's release of HomeKit found its reflection at Macoun. October 7–8, 2017 438Keynote Macoun 2017 For the tenth anniversary, attendees could vote for several talks that did not get accepted in previous years. These talks made about one third of the program. September 15–16, 2018 ~250 Due to several problems in the organisation of the event, Macoun 2018 had to be held mid September, resulting in a noticeable drop in the number of attendees. The talks covered new developments in Apple's frameworks (ARKit2, CoreML/CreateML) as well as third party frameworks, a view onto coding history as well as legal advices (related to GDPR) October 4–6, 2019 ~250 In 2019 the Macoun was a three-day event that started the day after German Unity Day.

The focus of the technical talks was on SwiftUI, Catalyst, and enhanced Apple frameworks such as CoreNFC.

Besides mainly technical topics, the 2019 had several talks on non technical topics such as marketing on a small budget. As a new block, there were longer sessions where speakers held workshops with limited seats. September 26–27, 2020 (announced) Canceled due to COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 Canceled due to COVID-19 pandemic. 2022 Canceled due to COVID-19 pandemic. September 23–24, 2023 (announced) -/- To be announced -/-

Notes

References

External links