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by svas 4453 days ago
That said, Apple's "return" compensation in terms of giveaway gifts and the like is a bit... stingy. Especially given how unbelievable Apple's profits have been of late.

WWDC giveaway: A $40 jacket that says "14" on it. Google I/O giveaway: $1449 Chromebook pixel.

So much for loyalty.
4 comments
ghshephard 4453 days ago
The entire idea is to not provide any "gifts" and "devices" to people attending, so the only reason they are attending is for quality 1:1 time with the Apple engineers plus the opportunity to socialize with your fellow Apple developers. The actual sessions are available on video, so you don't need to attend for those. Viewed from this perspective, lack of giveaways is a very deliberate and desirable feature of the WWDC.
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svas 4453 days ago
That makes sense. I can certainly see how giving away freebies is not the way to attract serious developers, and can be distracting.
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k-mcgrady 4453 days ago
Your 'return' is hands on time with engineers and access to developer sessions. It's a developer conference, not a giveaway.
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Jtsummers 4453 days ago
Why should they have to give anything special out? A bit of swag, sure, but pricey items? By your measure, they should be costing themselves at least $549/attendee (the difference between the Chromebook price and Google I/O admission cost). That's not including all the other costs that the admissions likely doesn't cover completely. Even for a profitable company that can afford it, other than the continued effort to drive everything to zero value, what's the point?

You make a developer event essentially free, and actually a net positive in material value, you end up with no developers attending. It's Comic Con for tech nerds. For a developer conference to have more value for the developers than the non-developers or they'll get pushed out because they're in the minority of interested parties.

> So much for loyalty.

Loyalty? Is buying attendance by giving away free stuff a way to show loyalty? Is buying users of software and players of games by giving it a way showing loyalty? It's a fucking PR stunt.

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deveac 4453 days ago
When you have to give your product away in order to help generate output from your developer community, that is an issue.

The lack of hardware freebies at Apple = developer opportunity essentially. Your "gift" is a healthy vibrant ecosystem, should you choose to accept it.

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