Line Forms At Apple's Always-Open Manhattan Cube 445
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?
Re:It's back! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Posts, barriers, and security on hand (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
What's worse? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:ImprovAnywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
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. [improveverywhere.com]
I suppose your friend could have phoned/emailed you after receiving the instructions...
Improv Anywhere is officially denying involvement [mrcharlietodd.com] (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.)
Re:It's back! (Score:2, Interesting)
The Jungle (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, that scene depicted people with absolutely no disposable income desperate to get their money back in their own hands, whereas--minus the hysteria--this scene depicts people desperate to put their money into someone else's hands. How far we've come.
Re:It's back! (Score:3, Interesting)
There, fixed that for you.
Re:The Time Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Meanwhile, at the Sony Style Store... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm concerned about stability (its not going to break), weight (not too heavy), size (not too big), that the keyboard is comfortable, the speakers sound good and have good placement, and that the ports are in non-annoying places. For all those things (in general), nothing compares to picking it up, listening to it, seeing how loud it is, etc... it is really closer to taking a test drive for a car than buying an appliance.
In Apple's case, I know what made me overcome my hesitation to switch was going to the store for 2-3 hours and attempting to do all the things I do on my PC to see if it was going to drive me crazy or not be possible.
So I have to disagree that my trip to the store wasn't weakness, but an exercise in prudence (shopping around).
Re:The reason is marketing (Score:4, Interesting)
If there is technology you want that is in high demand you can probably find it in a smaller town.
Re:Ah, the wonderful, screaming world of retail. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Ah, the wonderful, screaming world of retail. (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh. I have to say in fairness that full credit for spotting most of twitter's sockpuppets goes to Macthorpe [slashdot.org]. I just took the opening twitter gave me :)
I can't believe he would actually post a link to that, never mind doing it with one of his other accounts (in the third person, no less). I would have deleted it in embarrassment a long time ago. Well, I wouldn't have written it to begin with.
The usual YOU CANNOT TALK ABOUT TWITTER EVEN IF HE'S REPLYING TO HIMSELF WITH FIVE ACCOUNTS ON THIS THREAD moderation aside, I'd have to say you're on topic. After all, he's the one that posted the link to his lame journal entry, and that's what you commented on. And this whole thing is about Apple.
There's a duck outside the window, BTW <-- I MENTIONED FOWL SO MOD ME OFFTOPIC NOW OR SLASHDOT WILL BE RUINED
Re:Mass Hysteria (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:Mass Hysteria (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:The reason is marketing (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember thinking how stupid it was at the time, but I can't remember what the exhibit was, only that it was obviously non-offensive, especially after the recent semi-controversy about the 'Bodies' display that spent some time here.
Not to knock Pittsburgh museums; they are usually a source of pride for the entire region. This particular incident, however, isn't exactly the most intelligent thing they've ever done.
Credit where credit is due though, the Post-Gazette had absolutely no accompanying article, just this somewhat inciting photo and an utterly useless blurb. That's sadly sort of on par for that paper, though.
Re:The Time Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mass Hysteria (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Mass Hysteria (Score:0, Interesting)
With adult, real computers, every part has its own waranty. Also, you dont have to buy your service packs and DONT have to have any bloody itunes, quicktime or safari near your ANYTHING. (apple updater FTW)
Btw, have you tried using an expensive old g3 mac (your five year old example). Good luck finding software thats not purposely broken so that it wont run on your revision of the OS. Thats the most hilarious part. Even if the software would work fine, there are locks on most programs to tell you what os revision you can run them on. You know the odd program that complains when you run it on 2k, but doesnt on XP? thats par the course for mac - why didnt you buy the upgraded service pack you prole??!?
Time value of money and exponential improvement (Score:4, Interesting)
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
(_)
Re:Mass Hysteria (Score:3, Interesting)
One year warranty, 90 days of free phone support. Also, in certain countries the law states that the warranty period is longer unless the manufacturer can prove the fault was caused by the user. And there are tons of Wintel/PC manufacturers who have similar warranty lengths.
With adult, real computers, every part has its own waranty. Also, you dont have to buy your service packs and DONT have to have any bloody itunes, quicktime or safari near your ANYTHING. (apple updater FTW)Well, if you buy a pre-built PC then all parts are covered by the same warranty, same as an Apple, Sun, SGI or IBM machine. And if you build your own then that's one of the annoyances, having to figure out who to contact and where to send stuff ("What? They only have offices in Germany and Taiwan? And their service center is in Latvia?").
Also, "service packs" as you and Microsoft call it are free with Mac OS X (there have been two major updates since the release of Leopard) but the major releases have to be bought (just like you have to pay to upgrade from IRIX 6.2 to 6.5 or from WinNT 5.0 to WinNT 5.1).
As for the software, iTunes is actually pretty good and usable on OS X and so is Safari. Quicktime (as in, the application) isn't really that fancy and I prefer VLC but on a freshly installed system it does its job.
Btw, have you tried using an expensive old g3 mac (your five year old example). Good luck finding software thats not purposely broken so that it wont run on your revision of the OS. Thats the most hilarious part. Even if the software would work fine, there are locks on most programs to tell you what os revision you can run them on. You know the odd program that complains when you run it on 2k, but doesnt on XP? thats par the course for mac - why didnt you buy the upgraded service pack you prole??!?The newest G3 macs you'll find are six years old, and that was at the end of the product cycle. The first G3 macs were introduced in 1997 and the G3 Powermacs were phased out in favor of the G4 CPU in 1999. So with a six year-old iMac that was pretty much the lowest of the low end when it was new there will indeed be problems.
Also, I have not found this to be very common, some software that relies heavily on things that change between different versions of the OS will often have different executables available for different OS versions and in some cases the version for the older OS version may not be supported any more as it is not possible to add new features without maintaning separate codebases.
/Mikael (IHBT IHL HAND)
Re:Mass Hysteria (Score:2, Interesting)
That's 7 years of useful life for a laptop!
My dads Dell laptop was bought in 2000, he still uses it to this day. Sure, we upgraded it a bit with scavenged parts (512Meg RAM instead of 256Meg RAM and be bigger and faster harddisk). He still uses it to this day and has no intention whatsoever to replace it. 8 years and going strong.
Oh, any you surely want to know where that 256Meg RAM stick came from? I'll tell you: from an iBook 600MHz G3/384Meg RAM (later upgraded to 640Meg RAM which is where the 256Meg RAM stick comes from), I bought in December 2000 and which died in June 2005. Logic board failure. That's only 4.5 years for the Apple.
Now, sure, I know this is anecdotal evidence and all, but I *used* to be a Mac user. The iBook experience didn't do much good. I would have bought a new one, but their timing sucked: the Intel Macs were around the corner and I could only buy G4 laptops. I wasn't in hell going to do that. When the Intel MacBooks came along, I had my second hand laptop and was happy, so why change?
No, my new laptop isn't an Apple. I went the cheapo way: for 799€, I got a Dual Core machine with 1Gig RAM, 160Gig harddisk DVD-RW with Windows XP SP2. (For that the specs are meager, but I bought it in January 2007, just before the dreaded Vista release) Apple simply had nothing comparable for that price. It runs Ubuntu now, so I don't even have to cope with Windows anymore.
Look, the fanboy persecution complex! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Mass Hysteria (Score:3, Interesting)