The venue itself is larger in square footage, roughly 550,000 compared to Moscone's 300,000. It also has a larger capacity for people and seating. That said, actual attendee count is likely to remain at around 5,000 people (per Gruber and iMore). The extra space does allow for more Apple engineers to attend and be present for labs, etc.
Also keep in mind that last year they held the keynote in the Bill Graham Auditorium in San Francisco in order to support the extra amount of press, etc. that attends just the keynote. The San Jose center will be able to accommodate that extra amount of people who then disappear after the first 3 hours.
So conclusion, yes, bigger venue, but they aren't using it to increase attendee count.
Supposedly the venue holds roughly the same number of people. The benefit for Apple is that their engineers don't need a full day away to come to the conference so they'll be able to send more engineers.
The number of engineers is dwarfed by the number of attendees so not really. And they can rotate more engineers e.g. have people there for half a day, it's not wasted when it's a 5mn trip from HQ versus an hour drive to SF.
Sadly looks like not. Both John Gruber and iMore spoke to Apple and it's not a bigger venue:
> I asked whether the move to San Jose changed the number of people who’d be able to attend. Schiller said it did not — attendance will be about the same.
I guess their conclusion is that this is the maximum size for the goal they want to achieve. Can it be bigger without having an impact on the quality of the event?
