Is 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.
> but this is the kind of line-waiting that literally makes no sense at all to me
This is a cultural thing :) put a couple of us brits together and we will form a queue. And we will do it with minimal fuss and lots of solidarity.
We are damned good at it - and very proud of that.
(my "best queue" was 8 hours for a Leeds Festival ticket :))
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?"
In most of my friends who are interested in the iPhone, it's mostly just impatience.
So that sounds like the Gollum case. Impatiences for the preciouses. :P
Apple loves this stuff. I was in an Apple store a few weeks ago to buy a gift. Aside from the "Genius" Bar, there were five employees helping customers and another two employees fiddling with boxes and displays. There were seven or eight customers ahead of me impatiently waiting to be served. There was a lot of ostentatious yawning, foot-tapping, and watch-checking. In the ten minutes I stayed, the employees on the f…
That isn't policy. It's in-and-out at any of the NYC stores, and the one in Rosedale, Minnesota.
I don't exactly have high efficiency standards for retail employees at the mall. What I saw was shocking even by those standards. What was most offensive was that not a single employee in the store, and I mean not a single one, was sensitive to the impatience of the customers. Looking at the body language of the people around me, I think the mood varied from "grumpy" to "murderous," but the employees were calm, happy, and unhurried. Just from a psychological point of view, that seemed unnatural and offensive. Or sociopathic. When someone who's been waiting forever, during lunchtime (hence probably on their lunch hour,) marches determinedly up to a sales guy and tells him precisely what he want to buy, and the sales guy, instead of immediately getting the guy what he wants, starts demoing the product for him, and the guy says, "Uh huh, uh huh, yeah, I've got one already," in a pissed-off tone of voice, at that point the sales guy should, you know, give up and just sell the guy what he wants. To keep stalling and trying to make chit-chat, maybe start demoing a slightly different product, and to do all this calmly and slowly and beatifically, is offensive. Or sociopathic. Take your pick. A whole store full of guys acting like that, I don't know. I just don't know. Maybe it's the culture of the individual store, but I can't imagine it happening anywhere other than an Apple store.
That isn't policy. It's in-and-out at any of the NYC stores, and the one in Rosedale, Minnesota.
I don't exactly have high efficiency standards for retail employees at the mall. What I saw was shocking even by those standards. What was most offensive was that not a single employee in the store, and I mean not a single one, was sensitive to the impatience of the customers. Looking at the body language of the people around me, I think the mood varied from "grumpy" to "murderous," but the employees were calm, happy…
Do you happen to smell extremely bad? Maybe it's you?
Is 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.
When the first iPhone came out I was a senior in college - one of my buddies stood in line like a schlub and bought the damn thing as soon as it became available. A month later, I actually watched him try to pick up some girls in a bar by showing it off. I died a little inside.
And it's a sad thing when someone's identity hinges upon his being part of the elite, his sports team winning or making lots of money. Those are things to enjoy, surely - but if they get to be cornerstones of your personality, it's time for a reality check. Sure, that is the way life is for many people, but ... to think that Apple intentionally makes thousands of humans waste hours of their life doing something they…
OK, this discussion is way too big for HN, and I'm writing up a massive blog post explaining it, but you really can't blame Apple because the problem is way bigger than that.
Please post your blog post here (on HN) when it's ready.
I am surprised that nobody sees here a recipe for downfall : Apple is a very incompetent company when it comes to product massification. This is the most anti-Henry Ford strategy possible: overpriced premium products for a cult-like base of customers. They sell gadgets like Louis-Vuitton sells handbags and Prada sells shoes. And that's exactly the strategy they followed with the Mac and got them cornered in a niche. I wonder how long will it take until Dell, Asus or EeePc eats their lunch with a cheap Android.
Apart from the developers, does it hint at a certain emptiness in those people's lives?
Does driving or flying for hours to go on a holiday hint at emptiness? It's basically the same thing — putting up with a mostly unpleasant wait for an enjoyable experience — just the details of the fun time at the end are different. (Incidentally: I have never waited in line for an iPhone. But I do wait in line for hours every year to see Joss Whedon at Comic-Con, so I understand why somebody would put up with an ext…
The difference is that presumably for both holidays and Joss Whedon, there is no less painful alternative to getting what you want.