It’s the biggest Apple geekfest on the planet, and it starts next Monday.



Over the years the annual Apple WorldWide Developers Conference (WWDC), known simply to Apple aficionados as “dub-dub,” has evolved from a staid affair for a few hundred programmers learn how to build Apple-friendly apps into a showcase for some of the Cupertino company’s most iconic products.

Related: Apple’s Big Developer Conference is Next Week. Here’s What to Expect



It was at WWDC 2004 that Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s first cinema displays; in 2008 he revealed the 3G iPhone and the iTunes App Store. Last year Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced the latest version of Mac OS X (Yosemite), as well as iPhone’s iOS 8, featuring Healthkit (apps for fitness tracking) and Homekit (apps to automate your home).

What will next week’s WWDC hold? The smart money is on yet-another Apple streaming music service, improvements to Apple Pay, more news about the Apple Watch, and some home automation products (but apparently not a revitalized Apple TV).

But this year’s conference will have a tough time surpassing Apple’s more notable geekfests of days gone by. Here are some of the most memorable moments from the last three decades of dub dub:

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1988: Dogcow Goes Moof!



Clarus the dogcow at the Apple Icon Garden circa 1994 (Photo: Ianus/Flickr).

At this early WWDC, Apple employees wore buttons featuring a bovine-like canine known as Clarus the Dogcow. Created by legendary Apple graphic artist Susan Kare, the image was originally used inside the Mac OS to show the orientation of a page while printing. But Clarus quickly became an inside joke at Apple, used to represent projects that were not quite fully baked. The dogcow had a longer shelf life than most products introduced at WWDC, living for five years in the sculpture garden at Apple’s R&D campus. Now there’s an online museum devoted to her.

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1997: The Return of the Prodigal CEO

A 42-year-old Steve Jobs on stage at WWDC 1997 (YouTube).

This WWDC was memorable for the public return of Steve Jobs, then just a consultant to the struggling company he had helped to create. Jobs didn’t deliver a formal speech but he took questions for more than an hour, touching on topics from Microsoft and Larry Ellison to cloud computing and his personal design philosophy. Also, he advised people to buy Apple stock, then trading at around $17 a share. Really wish we’d listened to that one.