Hey Apple, WWDC is broken

Editor's Note: There's been quite a bit of confusion in the comments and on Twitter as to whether Erica's post represents her perspective on the challenge of Apple's service to a growing developer community, or personal frustration with being unable to register for WWDC due to the sellout. To clarify: Erica did not attempt to buy tickets and was not planning to attend WWDC; she has never attended WWDC due to ongoing family obligations that do not permit her the freedom for that much time away from home. The post has nothing to do with the supposed 'sour grapes' attributed by some feedback, as you cannot be shut out of a ticket rush for a conference you are not planning to attend.

Thinking about registering for WWDC 2011 during June 6-10? Um, too late. The premiere Apple developer event, affectionately known as "dubdub" to many of its participants, is already sold out, as we posted a short while ago.

If you were traveling or in meetings today, you may have missed out entirely on the opportunity.

Listen, Apple, if your event sells out in 10 hours, you're oversubscribed and under-serving your community. Just 10 hours, people -- 10 hours. That's just crazy. The Beatles won't even be there.

Apple, isn't it about time you start creating separate Mac OS X and iOS dev conferences? Even if you want to bring those platforms together and encourage cross development, there's just too much material to cover with one event.

Or, what about adding Winter and Fall events to help reach more partners? Your road shows and dubdub offerings just aren't doing it for an ever-growing population of developers flocking to iOS and OS X. Perhaps that's why there are so many iOS and Mac developer conferences these days outside of WWDC? [In addition to the linked Voices that Matter conference, there's MacTech, 360iDev and 360MacDev, GDC and others. These should have been in the article to begin with. - Ed.]

And there are only 5000 seats available? What worked for a niche OS isn't scaling to a popular mobile platform. Compare with Oracle's conference, where they entirely shut down streets to serve more than 40,000 participants.

Your resource scarcity is creating irrational frenzies, which hardly serves the community whose entire existence is there to support your company and its products. Today's scenario didn't even ensure the best developers will be there -- just the fastest with a credit card.

As for devs, if you missed your chance, well, there's always next year. Maybe. If you act fast enough when they announce the event next March.