We are giving out water
economist.com
We are giving out water
1–10 of 112 posts
Re: We are giving out water
#2Is it really, really so bad to wait a couple days or weeks longer to get your precious fucking iPhone?
I hate queuing in general, but this is the kind of line-waiting that literally makes no sense at all to me.
Re: We are giving out water
#3Is it really, really so bad to wait a couple days or weeks longer to get your precious fucking iPhone? I hate queuing in general, but this is the kind of line-waiting that literally makes no sense at all to me.
You hit on the key word right there in your 1st sentence: precious.
It's precious to some people. Goes beyond rational or objective value. Gets into emotional experiences, and heck even just having fun, getting a thrill, the excitement. That's why they feel they cannot wait, or choose not to wait.
There's also precious in the Gollum sense:
"What has the nasty Bagginses done with my preciouses?"
Re: We are giving out water
#4How is this any different from any other high demand product?
Re: We are giving out water
#5Is it really, really so bad to wait a couple days or weeks longer to get your precious fucking iPhone? I hate queuing in general, but this is the kind of line-waiting that literally makes no sense at all to me.
You see the same sort of thing and worse in new game console launches and (big) movie release dates. People camp out for days sometimes. A few hours is nothing, these Apple fans are either line-n00bs or flat out moderates compared to those.
Also remember that some of these may be developers, so getting it before their customers could be very important to their bank account.
Re: We are giving out water
#6It is pretty surprising that Apple hasn't been called on this cheap PR. Every person standing in line is being used as a stooge by Apple to get press, and the media always abides. This is the first article I've seen yet that points out this obvious exploitation of the Apple faithful.
It's positively archaic.
Just to be clear, as the article notes the people standing in line RESERVED a phone. They already have their spot. Apple makes them prove it by standing in line for 6 hours for the television cameras.
When the Motorola Droid was released, in comparison, I remember a lot of articles mocking the lack of lines. Yet somehow they sold 250,000 in the first week. It's kind of amazing what modern fulfillment processes can do, even if it doesn't lead to cult-like turnouts.
Re: We are giving out water
#7Is it really, really so bad to wait a couple days or weeks longer to get your precious fucking iPhone? I hate queuing in general, but this is the kind of line-waiting that literally makes no sense at all to me.
You see the same sort of thing and worse in new game console launches and (big) movie release dates. People camp out for days sometimes. A few hours is nothing , these Apple fans are either line-n00bs or flat out moderates compared to those. Also remember that some of these may be developers, so getting it before their customers could be very important to their bank account.
Apart from the developers, does it hint at a certain emptiness in those people's lives?
Re: We are giving out water
#8Hm, if I was an iPhone developer I would try to create an app for that. Organizing the queuing, I mean. Could we come up with some self organizing numbering scheme (assuming the shop doesn't collaborate, and everybody in the queue already has an iPhone (pre-4), which seems reasonable)?
A problem could be that people would forget to check in once they had their turn at the counter, so maybe it would have to be some kind of dead man's button ("yes, I am still queueing").
Re: We are giving out water
#9The picture couples well with the revealing self-description in the first sentence: 'like a dutiful customer'. As a _customer_, you have no _duty_ to the vendor. Oh, wait, it's Apple we're talking about. Never mind. :-)
Re: We are giving out water
#10How is this any different from any other high demand product?
It's a phone. That's a class of produce so "in demand" that phone companies give you a new one every year, even if you don't ask for it.