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Line Forms At Apple's Always-Open Manhattan Cube
SpectreBlofeld writes "According to EngadgetMobile, a line has formed in front of Apple's flagship Cube store in Manhattan. From the article: 'So word on the street (literally) is that a large number of people are queuing in line outside of Apple's flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City — keep in mind the Cube is open 24 hours a day. Our intrepid girl-on-the-scene reports that the group is more than 60-deep, though most people seem confused about what they're waiting for, but some believe they're actually camping out for a 3G iPhone.' Prank, or mass hysteria?" I wonder if the crowd already has its own Flickr group set up -- if not, what are they waiting for on that front?
I once visited the Apple campus at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino. There was a big open, quadrangular courtyard. Each side of the quadrangle had a huge banner, like 20 feet tall, displaying an Apple product: there was a iBook, a PowerBook, an iMac, and a Power Mac. The huge banners made me think of something the Soviets might have put up to glorify Stalin and Lenin at Red Square to celebrate the revolution. And certainly, Steve Jobs is a bit like Stalin or Kim Jong Il in creating a cult of personality, and you could argue that his product announcements are like the Communist Party rallies held in the USSR, China, or North Korea.
Obviously there are limits to such an analogy. I don't imagine Apple-manufactured tanks, made of polycarbonate and brushed alumninum rolling into Eastern Europe. And I don't imagine Apple getting the bomb, or starving millions of people to death, or locking PC users into re-education camps where they are taught how to use a mouse with a single button. Still, the way Jobs and Apple appeal to people is oddly similar to the way totalitarian regimes do.
This looks like a marketing stunt. Note that posts, barriers, and security people for line control were all on hand for this "unexpected" event.
Apple probably isn't even paying them. All they'd have to do is send anonymous text messages for a few of their fanboys, er, customers.
The fact that they line up for nothing, making them little more than a flash mob...
OR
That this story gets media attention at all and has anti-macheads all in a sweat shouting "sheeple!" and trying to put various political/religious/fanboi spins on the story?
-- Boycott Shell
This stunt sounds alot like what Improv Anywhere would do.
But your mention of "a friend of mine got an invite for it" sounds strange. Normally when Improv Anywhere stages an event, the invitation makes no mention of what the event actually is. It just says something vague like "bring a green shirt and be prepared to walk alot" or whatever. Only once everyone is gathered do they explain the stunt. (This is intentionally done to prevent information leaks and to keep everyone genuinely surprised.) If you want proof, watch some of their videos: the first step is always a briefing session for the volunteers.
I suppose your friend could have phoned/emailed you after receiving the instructions...
Improv Anywhere is officially denying involvement (not sure if you can take them at their word, however!). All this to say that without more proof, I don't think it's warranted to conclude this is Improv Anywhere's doing. (Yet.)
Actually, the first thing I thought of is the old Cold War story that a reporter in an Iron Curtain country decided to just wait at a door and see what happened, and shortly thereafter someone else joined him, and so on, until they'd accumulated a line around the block. It was always presented as some kind of myth about the Communist Mentality of mindless herd-like behavior or some similar propaganda deal. I guess this goes to show it's more like general human nature.
I realize others are replying that there were lines at the AT&T stores near them, but the day after launch I walked into my local AT&T store where there were maybe a couple people looking at Blackberries and asked if they knew when their next shipment of iPhones would be in. The sales person said, "Uh, I've got like 16 in the back.", "Oh? I'll take two. Thanks!" Gave one to my wife as a present and sold the other to my boss.
If there is technology you want that is in high demand you can probably find it in a smaller town.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
As far as the retail experience goes, coming from the gritty do-it-yourself-BestBuy-or-bust PC white/beige box world where I see computers as tools rather than post-modernist plastic sculptures to gawk at, I have to say I was rather pleasantly surprised. I half expected these guys (Geniuses?) to be no better than the ignorant, pushy pimply teenagers at BestBuy or the Gateway Country Stores (R.I.P.), but that was certainly not the case. I mean I didn't walk out of there with a hard on or anything like that, but Apple certainly has the "don't worry about anything, just give us your money and you'll be OK" approach completely figured out.
The thing that got my attention was the number of kids playing with the Macs on display, and the number of older people browsing around. I'm not sure what gives, but it's like the store atmosphere sort of encourages people to sit down, try things out and ask lots of questions. Inevitably I suppose this takes care of the other thing, which is to sell the boxes.
I can't say that I'm anything other than a die-hard Windows (with sprinklings of BSD and Linux) user, and I really wouldn't want or know what to do with a Mac. But at the expense of sounding a little fanboyish, the Apple store is very cool.
I think anyone with just a few working brain cells can figure out the real reasons for your lame little account of the terrible things suffered at the hands of these evil people. If I happened to be in the shoes of that ogre of a manager that "screamed" at you, I would have taken your picture and put up a website with an account of what really happened (one can only imagine your demeanor and shudder), along with a recommendation of how not to "evangelize" free software.
As always, you end up doing more harm than good - sockpuppets or not.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I guess it is a sign that i'm an electronics/computer geek that I don't consider a soldering iron and a decent selection of screwdrivers to be special tools. Putty knives are a bit of an odd tool to be using for electronics work but they aren't exactly an unusual tool in general.
And because there are realtively few models of mac it is generally fairly easy to find information on what order things come apart in (which is generally the biggest challange when working on laptops and similar IMO)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I live in Japan... I've seen _much_ worse. It's like a perfect storm of high population density and a love for queuing in orderly fashion.
- These characters were randomly selected.
There's nothing stopping you from keeping a non-Apple product for longer than two years, you know. Hell, my Toshiba laptop must be at least 6 years old now. As to replacing the phone, most people replace their phones every two years or so, the trendies replace them every six months. I'm certainly not discarding an 8 month old phone for GPS and faster networking. Sometimes buying the cheapest is not the best way to save money. In this case, however, there's a lot of room between "the cheapest" and an iPhone. For example, you could've gotten a feature phone that does 95% of the same stuff as an iPhone for 15% of the price, and you'd be able to keep it just as long as you're going to keep your iPhone.
See, buying something more expensive only saves you money in the long run if the cheaper one would need so much more maintenance or replacement that it wouldn't be cost-effective. But this isn't one of those situations. An HP, Dell, Toshiba, or any other competing laptop will last just as long as your MacBook (for hundreds of dollars less), and a Samsung, LG, Motorola, or any other competing phone will last just as long as your iPhone (for hundreds of dollars less).
There's nothing wrong with spending more money to get something flashy or cute or whatever, but don't pretend you're saving money this way.
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Your argument may seem convenient and pat, but
:-)
:-)
There's something cool called the "time value of money". There's also a unique property to the PC industry, which is a trend toward exponential improvement.
If you save $1000 today, it's actually worth a lot more compounded over 5 years from now. Not to mention the value in more frequent hardware replacements in an industry where exponential improvement is the norm.
Given accepted rates of return on things like index funds (10%), you could spend $1000 every 2 years, instead of $2000 every 5 years... You would have two brand new machines during that time on the same budget and have a bunch left over at the end. The only thing you miss out on is the first two years of having a 50% superior machine, if we arbitrarily call your $2000 Mac (we'll go wild) "50% better" than the $1000 PC when it was brand new.
The neat thing is that if you spend $1000 every two years rather than $2100 every five years, those last three years, you would have a far superior machine.... so... for more than half of the 5 year life cycle, you would have vastly superior machine... of course it does involve delayed gratification.
OK, lets do the numbers. I can hear your ears turning red.... or perhaps your eyes are glazing over. I don't care. Keep reading.
Even assuming Macbooks hold their value better (lets use some numbers and assume the PC depreciates at exactly 40% per year and the mac at exactly 30% per year), your 2nd $1000 PC purchase would cost you $640 after the trade in of your 2 year old PC (which was then worth $360). Your initial $1000 savings is now also worth $1331, which you can spend on that PC. So you have a brand new computer in the second year and $691 in the bank. Two years later, you replace it again, getting a trade in and paying $640 for a machine 8 times (exponential for 4 years) faster than your original box. Again, your initial savings on the purchase means that you don't have to put down any money. Your $691 could now be valued at $836, so even after you THIRD purchase (8 times faster than the original), you still have $196 in the bank. Upon reaching the 5th year, you evaluate your position.
Your $2000 Macbook is worth about $340 since it's 5 years old (30% per year).
Your $1000 PC is actually your third one you got with the same money. It's currently worth $600 (40% per year). You also have $215 in the bank from the leftovers after the trade-ins and compounded interest.
Lets say your $2000 Mac was.. we'll go wild and say it's 50% "better" than the $1000 PC when it was brand new. Today, you have a 1 year old PC that's valued at about $600 and is generally about 6 times faster (presumably "better" in most ways) than your 5 year old Mac. You didn't spend any additional money during the entire process but you got a new PC every 2 years.
Now, this argument is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT for someone who considers "money is no object", since they will simply buy the best AND replace it yearly. But for someone on an obviously restricted budget, it's simply silly to argue that you're saving money. In fact, it's a lie.
If you want to argue that the PC is so infuriatingly poor that you simply can't use it during those first two years.... there is nothing I can say and you are entitled to that opinion.
But you wanted to make some sort of kooky economic argument.....
epic fail.
Of course, this all falls apart if you're the type who will spend your spare cash on lotto tickets rather than putting it in an interest bearing account as I've assumed above....
Which is also entirely possible.
Hey, anything is possible!
o.0
(_)
No, you are submissive, dogmatic, and base much of your identity on a brand for consumer products. You are the shame of Mac users.
Has anyone else noticed the similarity between Apple fanboys and Republican freepers?
Think about it:
Criticism of the (product or company | party or policy) is seen as personal attack.
Criticism of the fearless leader is seen as a personal attack.
Both groups consider themselves tiny voices of truth being attacked by a horde who constantly censors them.
Both groups employ talking points which are repeated ad nauseam with little variation.
Of course, the result of this mentally is that people enjoy baiting them.