The popularity of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference has seen a steep upward slope since the introduction of the App Store in 2008. While the number of attendees previous to 2008 varied between roughly 2,000 and 4,000, Apple ended up putting a cap of 5,000 on its ticket sales starting in 2008 in order to control the flood of developers who were suddenly interested in learning more about Apple's ecosystem. That year was the first year Apple sold out of WWDC tickets in the history of the conference.
Since then, the WWDC ticket situation has only intensified. In 2009, those 5,000 tickets sold out within a month of going on sale. In 2010, the conference sold out in less than two weeks (roughly 10 days, to be exact), despite the huge ticket price bump to $1,599 for everyone. In 2011, WWDC sold out in 12 hours—again at $1,599 per ticket. And in 2012—Wednesday morning—those tickets sold out in two hours. They went on sale at 8:30am Eastern Time and were gone by 10:30am.
The immediate reaction from the developer community was that West Coast developers—arguably some of the most relevant to Apple's target demographic—were "screwed." When tickets go on surprise sale at 5:30am local time, it's not easy to be telepathic in your sleep and buy a ticket within an incredibly short time window before everything sells out. Indeed, numerous California-based developers—names that Ars readers might know and recognize—weren't even aware that tickets had gone on sale until after they had sold out.
It's clear that there's now a huge demand among developers to attend WWDC, and the Incredible Shrinking Time Window™ to buy tickets is only becoming smaller as each year goes by. This will continue to be the case as long as Apple's market share—especially in the mobile space—continues to grow. And let's be honest: although selling out in two hours is a great bragging point, Apple can't be thrilled with the idea that strong, key developers in different parts of the world simply had no chance at a ticket. The current limits on WWDC appear to be unsustainable, making us wonder if the way Apple approaches WWDC should change. After all, what will happen next year when the tickets sell out in an hour or less? What about when they sell out in 10 minutes?
"It's a tough issue for Apple—do you allow more developers to attend? Even if they went down that route, there's only so far they can go," News.me developer Robert Haining told Ars. "Do you raise the cost of a ticket? Then you increasingly limit developers based on whether they can afford it."
Apple has already tried to raise ticket prices—by quite a lot—and going much higher probably isn't practical or the answer to the problem. And since Apple only books one building, Moscone West, for WWDC, bumping the sheer number of developers allowed in the door could cause logistical problems (not to mention fire hazards).
Is there a solution?
But could Apple potentially expand WWDC to function across two of the Moscone Conference Center's buildings, like the Macworld Expo did for so many years? Apple already emphasizes that it focuses on OS X and iOS during the conference, and the company could conceivably designate one building (let's say Moscone South) for OS X talks and labs, while the other building (Moscone West) could house the iOS-focused ones. This would allow the company to both expand its curriculum for developers and its capacity to allow more developers in the door.
Another option would be to potentially split up WWDC into multiple events. The split could be dependent on OS, or it could be dependent on other factors, like an entirely IT-focused version of WWDC for the more IT-oriented crowd, or a student/newbie-based WWDC for those just getting started and wanting to learn more.
This would also allow Apple to expand its capacity and give a larger number of developers an opportunity to attend, though it could potentially splinter what many consider to be the most valuable part of WWDC: the cross-socialization during after-hours "get togethers." Then again, some developers think this quality of WWDC has already suffered due to its current size. "We’ve already grown so much we’ve mostly lost the social aspects of WWDC," Delicious Monster's Wil Shipley told Ars. "The beer bash is now essentially just a concert with five thousand tech people in the audience, and all the fun social activities I used to love—like the Cocoa birds-of-a-feather meeting or movie night or the late-night labs open for hacking—have long since disappeared."
In addition to this, as noted by Steve Scott on Twitter, time with Apple's engineers is already in high demand during WWDC—splitting up the conference could spread them too thin and lower the overall quality of the conference. iOS and Mac developer Colin Barrett pointed out to Ars that Apple could also consider larger single venues for WWDC, but acknowledged that such a suggestion was unlikely.
There are potentially other ways to handle the ticket problem that don't involve increasing capacity, but rather making the ticket-purchasing process more fair to developers. "Apple could pre-announce the sale date and time, so everybody—for some reasonable definition of that term—has an equal shot at timing their schedule to compete for the tickets," Red Sweater Software founder Daniel Jalkut told Ars.
The company could also still surprise the developer world with the ticket announcement, Jalkut pointed out, but buffer the number of tickets that can be sold per hour, for example. "This would give people in that happenstance target category a chance to gobble up the first 250, while people who learn about it later would have recurring opportunities to take part in the action," Jalkut said.
Other developers we spoke to seemed to agree that spreading out ticket sales might help. "I'd really like it if they stagger ticket sales in chunks over the course of a few days for different parts of the world," Square cofounder Tristan O'Tierney told Ars. But O'Tierney acknowledged that Apple could also split up its ticket sales depending on what developers are interested in attending. "I think they should start offering lab tickets separate from the talks," he said, "and do the talks in bigger rooms in other Moscone buildings."
Another option would be to allow registered developers to enter themselves into Apple's system as potential WWDC candidates and then offer tickets to them based on a lottery system, said Bare Bones Software's Rich Siegel. "If you 'win' you can buy a ticket, or opt not to," Siegel told Ars. "That way, there's no mad rush to buy out tickets while they're available, and those who reside in faraway time zones, or have to work through corporate channels for purchase approval, don't lose out."
Maybe Apple doesn't want a solution
Unfortunately, no one besides Apple knows whether the company is actually considering doing anything to revamp how it handles WWDC. The company keeps notoriously quiet about all of its plans—product-based or not—and did not respond to our request for comment on Wednesday.
But as many developers pointed out while we were preparing this article, Apple may not want to come up with a solution at all. If it approaches WWDC like it approaches iPads, for example, the company may view its instant sell-out of high-priced WWDC tickets as evidence that it's doing something right. But unlike iPads, Apple can't "make" more WWDC spots unless it revamps the system, so it's really a question of whether managing a conference and sacrificing its engineers for several days is worth Apple's return on investment when it comes to the developer community.
"Most likely of all is that nothing substantial changes next year," Barrett told Ars.
"Since the session videos are posted online after the event, developers will have timely access to the necessary information either way," Siegel pointed out." The bottom line is that it's up to Apple—it's their party."
Listing image by Photograph by dl.dropbox.com
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