Winning the Lottery
What a crazy day yesterday was. First, Goalposts, my new app, was released yesterday. When I submitted it for review I just happened to select April 25 as the availability date. I kind of wanted to manually release it after it was approved, but didn’t see the option so, whatever, fine, April 25 sounds good. Little did I know at the time that WWDC tickets would also go on sale on that date. I thought briefly about changing it but, you know, once an app is submitted for review it kind of scares me to mess with any of it, so I left it. It went into review and was approved Wednesday afternoon, so here we are.
You know when I first had the idea I thought it was going to be really great. Scratch that. I thought it would *do* really great because it was different, useful, fun, cute, what have you. Of course I believe it’s really great, why would you write something if you felt otherwise?! But as the project progressed I was less certain how well it would do and my expectations gradually drifted back down to reality. By the time yesterday rolled around I had no expectations at all.
While we didn’t knock WhatsApp from the top of the charts (as if), I am nevertheless so grateful for the response we received. Just blown away. And not because we finished the day amongst the top 100 in Lifestyle, although that was a pleasant surprise. No, what really got me was the support from friends and fellow devs.
I spent all those nights and weekends cranking out code, and at certain point it’s 4 in the morning and you’re re-writing the timeline layout for the third freakin’ time, you start to wonder why am I doing this? Is anyone even going to care? Then yesterday arrived and I start seeing people re-tweeting my announcement, sharing it on Facebook, passing along their congratulations, and I swear even just a “hey looks pretty good, nice work”, feels a little like winning the lottery. It really meant a lot and I just want to say thank you all. It also made me think: you know I see friends release stuff all the time and I think to myself, oh good for them, that’s awesome, but don’t actually *say* anything. I need to do a better job at actually taking a few moments to pass long an attaboy. It takes so little effort, but means so much.
So, speaking of winning the lottery, anyone hear about that WWDC thing yesterday!?
Yeah.
Like so many of you I waited anxiously for 12 o’clock to roll around so I could purchase my ticket. And like so many of you I was denied. Shortly after all this went down, the complaints about process of purchasing WWDC tickets began again this year. Don’t get me wrong, WWDC is definitely broken. I just don’t know what the solution is. Daniel Jalkut (whose fine app I’m using using to compose my thoughts…. attaboy!) went so far as to suggest that we should just give up on WWDC altogether. While that seems a bit drastic, something needs to be done. And you know, honestly Apple did try something different this year. Didn’t work out too well, but clearly they’re aware of the problem and trying to come up with a solution. Part of that was the pre-sale announcement and the other was announcing that videos will be made available while the conference is underway. I believe they did that in hopes that maybe that would lessen demand. Doesn’t seem to have worked, but still.
So my last WWDC was 2011, which was coincidentally Steve Jobs last WWDC as well. I remain somewhat optimistic that my chances of going to another WWDC are slightly better than his. I’m actually still thinking about going maybe for altWWDC or just to hang out for a few days. Half of what makes WWDC so special is getting to meet up and hang out with your peers. I’m never so fired up about what I do for a living as when I get back from a conference, especially WWDC, so it’s very tempting. I think I’m going to take the weekend to mull it over and decide what to do then.
In the meantime, thank you all again for the kind words yesterday. And perhaps I’ll get a chance soon to express my appreciation in person. We’ll see!