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?

Mass Hysteria

It's apple people. What ELSE could it be but mass hysteria? ;)

Re:Mass Hysteria

Mass confusion maybe?

It's usually better to wait for a while when a new product is released - that way someone else will have all problems.

Re:Mass Hysteria

It's apple people. What ELSE could it be but mass hysteria? ;)

OS X and commodity x86 architectures living together?

Re:Mass Hysteria

It's apple people. What ELSE could it be but mass hysteria? ;)

OS X and commodity x86 architectures living together?

Nobody steps on a Mac in my town!

Re:Mass Hysteria

It's apple people. What ELSE could it be but mass hysteria? ;)

Yeah, but when we Apple fans do mass hysteria, it's in a hip, cool, stylish kinda way.

The Onion

"Line forms spontaneously at NYC Apple Store" It sounds like a headline on The Onion! I guess we've been at the point where The Onion sounds like real life [theonion.com] for some time now.

Re:Mass Hysteria

It's apple people. What ELSE could it be but mass hysteria? ;)

Yeah, but it's mass hysteria with hipsters and threesomes with hot vegetarian girls protesting the war.

Re:good computers

Yes, it must be tough to deal with such huge crowds.

60 people? NYC's entire Mac-using population has shown up!

The Time Machine

Does this remind anybody else of the Eloi gathering to be taken underground by the Morlocks?

Apple...

You know Apple fandom is getting excessive when a product doesn't even need to exist to get hyped...

Re:Apple...

Whatever is in there, it's the only thing I've ever wanted! - Fry

The reason is marketing

So the link is "iphone-line-forms-at-apples-flagship-for-absolutely-no-reason." It seems quite obvious that the reason is marketing. Same as when there were lines at Apple stores selling iphones but not at AT&T stores selling iphones.

It's back!

People lining up in front of stores in the hope that maybe there will be something for sale that they are after - sounds like the Soviet Union to me!

Re:It's back!

People lining up in front of stores in the hope that maybe there will be something for sale that they are after - sounds like the Soviet Union to me!

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.

Re:It's back!

Anyone wanna come stand in the Zune line with me?

And verily, Our Lord Jobs Did Come Unto Them

And the Lord Jobs did address the faithfully assembled masses, saying "Unto you my loyal supplicants I do bestow the bounty of the 3G iPhone, that ye may use it at all times, and in sickness, and in health, and in times of pestilence and low bandwidth, and it shall comfort thee."

And then did the Lord Jobs hand out the Holy 3G iPhone unto the chosen who harkened unto him, and it was good.

Improv Everywhere?

Maybe it's the same people who pulled off this stunt? http://improveverywhere.com/2006/04/23/best-buy/ [improveverywhere.com]

Re:Improv Everywhere?

It's not IE. Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere, says so on his Blog [mrcharlietodd.com]

For the record, Improv Everywhere has nothing to do with this. Though I do love that we're now the go-to guess for anything out of the ordinary!

Apple's newest product...

The ILine :)

Maybe they're British

Are they moaning as well?

Nothing that the British like more than moaning and queuing.

What's worse?

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?

Meanwhile, at the Sony Style Store...

Meanwhile, at the Sony Style store, 5 blocks away, the glow of HDTVs illuminated the vapid faces of salespeople in tshirts as they stared across the racks over empty aisles. Aisles of laptops, PS3s, CDs and other items went unpurchased, and no one was there to see it.

Brand name computer stores are the outlet for those too weak to resist the urge to make impulse purchases in excess of a month's income. The fact Apple has been able to capitalize on this trend so well speaks to the fetishistic appeal of those shiny laptops and the absence of any real value in their products. Convinced the worth of something that is not even there, people are literally waiting in line to buy nothing.

Truly, they are the dead.

M

Re:Ah, the wonderful, screaming world of retail.

Oh well, good for Apple - they can't make computers fast enough for demand. That's really what this is about and they deserve the marketshare.

I think that's up for debate, and really, this is most likely a social prank, not a mass gathering to encourage Apple to speed up production of the i[newest-product-name-goes-here].

Re:Ah, the wonderful, screaming world of retail.

Twitter, you need to learn the basic rules of social interaction.

That Apple employee did NOT care about your stupid canned lecture about Free Software(tm).

They didn't demonstrate setting up dual-booting with Windows, not because there's a vast corporate conspiracy against Free Software(tm), but because the display was already set up with all the steps laid out, and the employee wasn't going to spend 3 hours of a workday setting up Free Software(tm) for the sole purpose of demonstrating software that works the same with any 2nd OS.

The employees didn't like you, not because they're part of a vast corporate conspiracy against Free Software(tm), but because you went to an Apple store for the sole purpose of harassing employees about information you could have obtained much more easily with Google, JUST so you could give an absolutely retarded canned lecture about Free Software(tm) to an employee who didn't give a shit at all.

They kicked you out because you were acting like an obnoxious prick, not because you were asking too much about free software and/or you were embarrassing them with your superior knowledge of software and/or they were ignorant or forbidden to tell what they knew. In the future, just shut the fuck up, 'kay?

Twitter

"Hi, I'm Twitter! I refer to my^H^Hhimself in the third person! I bother a busy store about products they don't support! I have a journal!"