Apple Offering Some Devs a Second Chance at WWDC Tickets

MacRumors · Apr 25, 2013

Tickets for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference sold out this morning in less than two minutes, leaving a number of developers with error messages stating that their purchase requests were unable to be processed.

According to a tweet from Red Sweater Software founder Daniel Jalkut, Apple contacted some registered members of its developer program to offer them a second chance to purchase a WWDC ticket. Eric Doleki detailed his phone call from Apple in a blog post.

I pick up and a nice guy tells me he's from Apple Developer Support and that they noticed that I tried to purchase a ticket today and that the transaction didn't go through. I told him that was true. I thought the next thing out of his mouth would be an apology or something - just to be nice.

He then proceeds to tell me that he's got good news - a ticket has been reserved for me in my name and that I'll be receiving an email from Developer Support within 12 hours with instructions on how to purchase the pass. He thanked me for supporting the platform, etc.

Dolecki's story has been confirmed by several other developers on Twitter who have also received phone calls from Apple. The company appears to be offering tickets to developers who experienced a failed purchase after placing a WWDC ticket in their shopping carts.

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference will take place June 10-14 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. Tickets are priced at $1599.

Article Link: Apple Offering Some Devs a Second Chance at WWDC Tickets

holmesf · Apr 25, 2013

Two of the three engineers at my company got this call. We had all tried to purchase tickets at 10am, none of us with any success.

ConCat · Apr 25, 2013

holmesf said:
Two of the three engineers at my company got this call. We had all tried to purchase tickets at 10am, none of us with any success.

If I was you, I would have wrote a macro to auto-purchase tickets the moment they go on sale. Considering the crowd that shows to these things, I wouldn't be surprised if quite of few of them do that.

darcyjames · Apr 25, 2013

Sucks to be the people that had to re-enter the CAPTCHA code.

Rampage Dev · Apr 25, 2013

So Apple does have a soul. Who knew!

pixelpro · Apr 25, 2013

This is what separates the king of customer service from the copycats!

Keyhole · Apr 25, 2013

Seems like the system may have failed and made it seem like all of the tickets were sold out in two minutes. Apple is following up trying to sell off the unsold tickets without re-opening the sale to the public.

Just a theory.

petsounds · Apr 25, 2013

I was in the process of checking out when the ticket was removed from my cart. Same thing happened to a colleague of mine. This happened for both of us way under the published sellout time. He got an e-mail saying there was a ticket for him, however I haven't heard a peep from Apple.

They need a reservation timer like Ticketmaster and many other sites have.

JayCee842 · Apr 25, 2013

pixelpro said:
This is what separates the king of customer service from the copycats!

Couldn't have said it any better.

relimw · Apr 25, 2013

Really, if you actually pay Apple money to be a developer, they should reserve a ticket for you versus "opening it to the public"...

chrisbru · Apr 25, 2013

relimw said:
Really, if you actually pay Apple money to be a developer, they should reserve a ticket for you versus "opening it to the public"...

The problem is the extreme excess of paid developers vs. amount of space at the conference. It only costs $100 to be a member of the developer program.

Edit: Don't quote me on that number, it may have changed since the last time I looked.

Edit: Yup, $99. I bet there are way more than 5,000 "developers" (that's how many tickets were available) who just pay the $99 to have access to iOS betas.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/

B... · Apr 25, 2013

chrisbru said:
The problem is the extreme excess of paid developers vs. amount of space at the conference. It only costs $100 to be a member of the developer program.

Edit: Don't quote me on that number, it may have changed since the last time I looked.

$99 a year for each. So more than $100.

69650 · Apr 25, 2013

Seems a daft system to me. Couldn't they hold a series of WWDC conferences around the world over the space of a month to give more developers a chance to attend. Not all Mac developers live in California.

Or maybe take it online instead with webcast seminars and presentations followed by the chance to have web chats with Apple engineers.

The current system just shows how US centric Apple still is despite repeatedly stating that future growth will primarily come from international sales.

gibbz · Apr 25, 2013

My buddy just received a call informing him that he now has a ticket.

maxosx · Apr 25, 2013

ConCat said:
If I was you, I would have wrote a macro to auto-purchase tickets the moment they go on sale. Considering the crowd that shows to these things, I wouldn't be surprised if quite of few of them do that.

Our company does this & avoids the madness.

Apple just loves headlines.

They can hype anything.

No wonder they have such a variety of FART apps. Kids love Em.

Shrink · Apr 25, 2013

relimw said:
Really, if you actually pay Apple money to be a developer, they should reserve a ticket for you versus "opening it to the public"...

chrisbru said:
The problem is the extreme excess of paid developers vs. amount of space at the conference. It only costs $100 to be a member of the developer program.

My understanding is that there are something like 250,000+ devs just counting the one's with apps in the Apple app stores.

And only 5000 seats...seems like it would work out too well.

fr33 loader · Apr 25, 2013

pixelpro said:
This is what separates the king of customer service from the copycats!

Lol. You call it great customer service, I call it a screw up.

If it would have been working properly, they could have avoided all this hassle. Good spin on the story though.

turtle777 · Apr 25, 2013

LO, this is like scoring a Bag of Crap from Woot!

-t

timborama · Apr 25, 2013

Hmmm, can't even get 5,000 sales right. SJ would not approve.

Rogifan · Apr 25, 2013

timborama said:
Hmmm, can't even get 5,000 sales right. SJ would not approve.

Wow how original.

coolfactor · Apr 25, 2013

petsounds said:
I was in the process of checking out when the ticket was removed from my cart. Same thing happened to a colleague of mine. This happened for both of us way under the published sellout time. He got an e-mail saying there was a ticket for him, however I haven't heard a peep from Apple.

They need a reservation timer like Ticketmaster and many other sites have.

Wasn't the published sellout time just two minutes, so how could you have done your purchase "way under" that time?

macalec · Apr 25, 2013

I think that it was very nice of them to do this! They could have simply looked the other way with regard to this and blamed it on servers,etc. Maybe they have more room at the conference than they let on...

1600VAM · Apr 25, 2013

Awesome, got the call, as did a few other engineers in my org. I tried to complete my transaction at about 10:02 but got an error. I'm guessing the system that actually completed the transactions failed after about a minute, but they recognized that they had enough orders and just closed it, knowing they could go through the logs and follow up with the customers in order.

----------

Shaun said:
Seems a daft system to me. Couldn't they hold a series of WWDC conferences around the world over the space of a month to give more developers a chance to attend. Not all Mac developers live in California.

Or maybe take it online instead with webcast seminars and presentations followed by the chance to have web chats with Apple engineers.

The current system just shows how US centric Apple still is despite repeatedly stating that future growth will primarily come from international sales.

I think there are a few reasons they don't do this:
- They're already putting the presentations online on the day of.
- They don't want their engineers away for more than a few days.
- The best part of the conference is the keynote, which you can only do once.
- The after hours experience is a pretty significant part as well, and you can go have drinks and talk big without having to get a ticket.

autrefois · Apr 25, 2013

Keyhole said:
Seems like the system may have failed and made it seem like all of the tickets were sold out in two minutes. Apple is following up trying to sell off the unsold tickets without re-opening the sale to the public.

Just a theory.

So there is someone out there more cynical than me!

Normally I'm the first to think such things, and it's not impossible, but my first reaction was that Apple may actually just be making a good gesture here.

timborama said:
Hmmm, can't even get 5,000 sales right. SJ would not approve.

I hear that during the keynote, Apple will be announcing revolutionary software on OS X and iOS that automatically filters out any comments related to "Steve would/would not do this". As soon as Tim announces it, there will be a standing ovation.

extensor · Apr 25, 2013

Trollville

Wow, I remember when I could come here and read witty, intelligent comments. Now there are so many trolls.

Apple Offering Some Devs a Second Chance at WWDC Tickets

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