Only one word comes to mind.
Why? Is this some sort of status or group thing to wait for something you could pre-order and get at home? I guess I'm just not hip enough to understand.
Apple has yet to formally introduce or set a release date for its next iPhone, but that hasn't stopped rabid fans of iStuff from queuing up for Cupertino's next shiny release. Customers in New York have already begun camping out in front of the company's flagship store for the honor (and attention) of being the first in line …
The correct approach, when given an iThing, is to carefully place it on a chopping block. Then carefully raise your wood splitter (back-end first, not pointy end) and bring it down hard onto the offending iThing. Repeat about a dozen times or so, until it has been rendered safe.
Any parts still recognisable should be disposed of as hazardous waste.
Idiots like those camping out in NY are what creates this fanbois meme, and I hope it rains for the next few days.
Other people actually buy this kit as a careful, deliberate choice, usually after it has been out for a while (the primary use of fanbois is being beta testers :). Having said that - that is after weighing off the risk of not-so-good logon security of the one-to-bind-them-all Apple IDs vs. the benefit of very usable kit that tends to work as it is supposed to do.
However, bigger idiots destroy a piece of tech instead of selling it on ebay, of course.
>> Other people actually buy this kit as a careful, deliberate choice
Not true. Any well-informed person that made a choice not based entirely on fashion would have bought an Android-based device.
On both functionality and price (i.e. the actually important stuff) Apple doesn't have a prayer against Android.
If being hip means spending the best part of a month being a tramp then I am happy to leave it to others. I know it is party of the cult of Apple but I fail to see why a company that actually makes pretty decent products encourages this? Perhaps it's just that mentality, to whip them up into a frenzy so they overlook the fact is just an incremental update (like most phone updates are these days). I preordered a note 3 and it turned up the morning of release. Some people got them the day before release. No fuss, no hipster tramping, funny thing is the phone works just as well.
Now tickets to a Rush or Cream concert I might consider camping for!
Dudes know how to tour...Unlike, say, for example, Pink Floyd.
Given that there are only two members of Pink Floyd left alive and still "in the band" (and only founder member is the drummer), I suppose a downturn in touring activity can be somewhat excused.
That said, new* album comes out next month. Who knows, perhaps Gilmour and Mason might take the old show back on the road one last time.
*How new it is remains to be seen.
>> That said, new* album comes out next month.
Damn really? cool.
Don't get me wrong, I *love* the old stuff, but I hope the new album won't just be mostly do-overs of from Dark Side of the moon and The Wall again, like they did with the last album (Division Bell). If they are going to do old stuff then they should do the really old stuff, like from Live at Pompeii and the 30 minute surfing sequence on Crystal Voyager.
"The details of the deal between the Rays and the app developers aren't made clear, but there is more going on here than the Reg article suggests."
Indeed. Another important point El Reg neglected to mention was to whom they shelled out the $2,500, which was explained in the linked article: Two others who were there before them, and therefore seem to have found a neat way to make a few bucks (provided they get the timing right, and don't end up camping out too long to be the first in line to sell their places!)
"The details of the deal between the Rays and the app developers aren't made clear, but there is more going on here than the Reg article suggests."
Yup, there are 4 people involved here, seemingly none of them particularly want an iPhone. First 2 are there to secure the spot to sell it on (for $2500 each), second 2 are there to promote an app by means of the free media that are covering their presence outside the store.
It's like its own little economy literally built on nothing.
Apple just needs to end the camping out. Do what many companies did long ago; the lottery system. You show up, you get assigned a number. When they are ready to open the store, they pick a number and start from there. This ends the people trying to break the 18-day record and for trying to sell a spot.
Apple just needs to end the camping out. Do what many companies did long ago; the lottery system. You show up, you get assigned a number. When they are ready to open the store, they pick a number and start from there. This ends the people trying to break the 18-day record and for trying to sell a spot.
Sadly, some people in Apple seem to be desperate to keep the cult thing going. I can see this work in the US, but I'm frankly disappointed it works anywhere else too. If it wasn't so much more functional than the alternatives I'd pass, but our choices are based on simple TCO evaluation in the context of what we do. I can imagine that this works out differently for others, but for us it works.
As others have said, the whole camping out for weeks on end, followed by the hilarious spectacle of the employees applauding you in as if going to the Apple Store is something worthy of adulation like running a marathon or winning a cup final (congratulations! you're a mug!), is part of the Apple cult image. When something's parodied in an advert for Carlsberg industrial cider you know it's part of the popular consciousness.
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18 days of looking like a fool, 1 minute to unbox , 1 minute to configure, 1 quick call to another fool, et voila, the orgasm is gone.
Fapping oneself for 18 days for a 3 minute orgasm just doesn't seem worth it.
Andy Warhol's 15 minutes will seem very short lived once world + dog has finished laughing at this short manifestation of patheticness.
(Definition : Patheticness - The incredible lengths that one will go through, to do something completely worthless and twee).
I happened to be in New York a couple of years ago when the iPhone 5 launched and there were TV crews from around the world interviewing people in the line pretty much 24 hours a day.
The story says that these two have some software to promote, making this a marketing exercise - they'll get 18 days of worldwide press coverage for their $2,500 ($3,200 including phone), which is a bit of a bargain.
Fanbois? Not likely.
Are they infected with Rabies?
Are they drooling/frothing at the mouth?
If they are then they should be taken away and quietly put out of their mysery.
Otherwise.... Leave the clearly derranged souls alone. Giving them publicity only serves to make them breed (I can be on TV for 5mSec). No publicity and soon they will give up.
On the otherhand, Samesung looks on and says, 'how can we get the same free publicity'?
A Reg article about the innovations and improvements on Samsung's new phones, followed by an article about Apple fanbois paying thousands for the honor of queuing up to by an iPhone they know nothing about (literally, they don't even know for sure if it even exists).
I... really don't know what to say, actually.
It may be worth you reading the actual CNBC article and especially watching the video instead of going into rabid foam-at-the-mouth fanboi denouncement mode solely based on the Register's take. You'd pick up a rather important bit of information (no idea why that was omitted, either precisely to troll the Apple denouncement crowd or simply incomplete research).
Both group of "firsts" are actually using the position for commercial promotion, so they get days worth of TV and media exposure. I don't know if you have ever bought a prime time TV advertising slot, but rest assured that you won't get it for $2500, and it certainly won't get as much attention and coverage as being in the news, globally.
They're the ones having the last laugh...
....Surely, Skype allows patients to VC with anyone they choose (along with loads of other soft & hard VC stuff), what does VideoMedicine bring to the party? Just Googled VideoMedicine + Skype & only the iPhone 6 news resulted. They definitely have a marketing issue if sitting in a queue is their best shot.
That's even sadder, frankly. What sort of person would buy a product because they thought "wow, if someone at the front of an Apple queue is behind it, it must be good"? Well, I can answer my own question: the Rays are promoting something called "VideoMedicine" which lets you talk to doctors via Skype. So it's an app to make it easier for hypochondriacs to moan about their imaginary aches and pains. If you think about it, the Venn intersection between people who spend all their time talking about their iPhone, and the similarly desperate-for-attention people who spend all their time talking about how they might have bird flu, is probably pretty large.
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I presume that status of being first in line would wane if any product launch is deferred to, say, December and that those in line are not going to be those employed on Wall St. Some, if not all, must be getting an incentive from Apple to join the queue. I've only witnessed one iPhone launch queue (outside the Glasgow store many years ago) and it was mostly composed of the 'geniuses' selling the item in the first place.
These people clearly have too much life if they can afford to waste days of it. It would be most equitable if some of them could be relieved of this excess life in order to boost the years of those of us who have too much to do and not enough time to do it in.
And am I the only person who’d laugh himself stupid if, after all this queuing, Apple didn’t release anything new on September 9th. Just a big empty stage with the words ‘Fooled You’ on it.