When I worked for Apple they gave every employee The Ideavirus by Seth Godin. I hope they accept his critiques about the recent iPhone 3G rollout. From the article:
Principle 1: Use the internet to form a queue. If you have a scarce product, you almost certainly know it's scarce in advance. Instead of taxing customers by wasting their time, reward the early shoppers by taking orders online. A month before sale date, for example, tell them it's coming. If you sell out before ship date, that's great, because next time people will be even quicker to order when they hear about what you've got. (And you can do this in the real world, too--postcards with numbers or even playing cards work just fine.)My roommate Mike had a similar idea, basically to enroll through iTunes and print an iPhone "boarding pass" at home. It would still solve the unlocker problem, plus you wouldn't have people who schlep themselves to the store only to find they can't buy the phone for whatever reason.
A hot band that regularly sells out on the road, for example, could put a VIP serial number inside every CD or t-shirt they sell. Use that to pre-order your tix.
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