With WWDC selling out so fast that West Coast developers were left out in the cold, there are a lot of people calling for changes to Apple’s WWDC ticket sales process. It seems that Apple may be trying to free up some tickets by canceling those that were purchased by people Apple deems ineligible for WWDC.
Two fairly prominent figures in the Apple tech world, Aaron Hillegass and Cabel Sasser, both tweeted that Apple cancelled their tickets. In Hillegass’s case, his company Big Nerd Ranch, Inc. primarily does software training, consulting, and book publishing. The company does have four apps on the App Store currently, including Camp Where, Play This Note (Bass), Play This Note (Guitar) and eClicker Host. Cabel Sasser, however, is the co-founder of Panic, which is the company responsible for Transmit, Coda, and Unison. He too was denied access to the conference.
Early speculation had both Sasser and Hillegass being denied entry to WWDC because they’re both not developers; however, as we can see from their portfolio’s above, both are responsible for applications in some capacity, so the point seems moot. Hillegass eventually took to Twitter with a theory: “Apple will not say why my tix were revoked, but it seems that if you bought multiple tix with one credit card, all were all revoked.” Apple does stipulate that only one ticket can be purchased per person, and up to five tickets can be purchased by a company. From the sounds of it, it’s starting to look like what Apple really meant was that purchases needed to be made from different credit cards.
That said, there have been reports of everyone from Apple fans to journalists purchasing tickets for WWDC. We never really understood why non-developers feel a need to be at WWDC. We didn’t buy tickets, nor will we ever, unless we get into the app development game.
The fact that Apple is canceling purchases is kind of a dastardly move, but that said, if you’re not currently a developer and you’re out there buying up WWDC tickets, you kind of deserve to have your purchase cancelled, don’t you?
Apple was likely caught with their pants down, and had no idea that tickets would sell out so quickly. WWDC tickets sold out in under two hours this year, compared to twelve hours last year. There’s nothing the company could have done to foresee that kind of demand. Now that one of the largest development geographies in the world, Silicon Valley, is pretty much shut out of WWDC, Apple has to do something about it. Canceling tickets for ineligible attendees seems like it’s going to be the first step, and we don’t mind at all. It’s the World Wide Developer Conference, and not the World Wide Manager Conference, or World Wide Fan Conference, or World Wide Amateur Developer Conference.
