Exclusive!: Apple enjoys making it impossible for their biggest fans to buy their products
Despite e-mail warnings from my boss to wait for iPhone 2.0/3G to stabilize, and then perhaps buy one through our work i.t. (so I can transfer my blackberry’s phone number, and align through our corporate AT&T cellular plan), I went out today to buy an iPhone 3G to help ease the pain of not having an apple product to buy a month ago after WWDC. It didn’t go well.
This is my story, which was mostly written via email into my blackberry, hence the thumb-esque conan-speak, thumb-spelling and general lack of definite articles. Liberties were taken, but not many. thank you to juan for inspiring me to get back in the game. See you next year!
2:54pm
Sitting outside (not on line; on bench) apple store in clarendon va. Appx 50-60 people in line to buy the iPhone 3G. Looks to be the feel-good hit of the Summer.
Riot about to break out; Apple citizens in line shouting at hired line security thugs re: ‘line not moving in over two hours’. Wish blackberry world edition had camera / video, because I think I could get famous. I think it’s about to be set off, football hooligan-style. People are baking in the sun and not happy. Boiling heat, summer stench. Plus every third person that walks by starts laughing / taking camera phone pictures of people in line, taunting, irritating. this is what happens when an apple store is between a williams sonoma and some boutique clothery. like most apple stores aren’t. i assume this is happening everywhere. a happening.
Family of filthy rednecks (what are they doing in Clarendon; I hope they’re reading this over their dialup connections) just walked by line and loudly proclaimed ‘hick hick why don’t those idiots just buy it from ameeezon dot com hick?’. iPhoneists in line, so angry, shouted epithets at family of inbreeds, which included small children (both in the family, and doing the shouting from the line). The apple user backlash is full steam, bi-directional. This fun / comedy almost makes up for not having an iphone. Although these people on the ready line are my brothers, I am slightly removed… watching the game, not in the line. Too lazy. So lazy. Glad apple makes it hard to buy their products.
I’m supppoed to be at friend Steve’s birthday party in a few hours, but I don’t think I can leave this scene; previously unknown journalistic impulses surfacing. Plus, if the line trickles to zero, I’m in there to win.
surly Line-dwellers just yelled at secuirity ‘get us some cokes or something!!!’. Security: ‘you get back in line! You get back in line!’. I couldn’t make this up. Keep an eye on cnn — I swear there is going to be a riot. Let’s kick it off. I can’t report the truth[1].
3:30pm
Just saw 20-something 9 month pregnant woman on line. Should she be there? Does she have to be there? Is the iphone for the fetus? What if she calves right here? My god, as if the situation wasn’t bad enough, we could have a mucus plug, amniotic fluid, and a new life (undoubtedly apple-supporting, as it should be) to deal with in realtime. Maybe that would help her get forward in the line, which is not moving.
This apple store is in a fake ‘fancy towne‘ that is retail below, apartments directly above. People are sitting on balconies, drinking sangria and cold beer, spectating, taunting. That’s the way to do it.
Line is _not_ moving. Has not moved in the 46 minutes I’ve been sitting here. Sun was behind a cloud for a few minutes, but now bacl with a vengence. They’re burning, burning! Ow! - a goddamn bird bit me on the ankle! What the fuck? The woman next to me is throwing bread to the birds, and also watching the Apple iPhone people. My ankle is not bread, budgie, although it may be pastey and doughy! I should stamp you down like a pigeon, yet I am merciful.
3:50pm
Amusement: person walks up to iGoons claiming to want to purchase a mac book pro (ie something apple isn’t losing money on today, like the iPhone). igoon points legitimate man to end of the line. “But I’m not buying an iphone!’. Pointed to end of the line. Then, other line security guy seems to understand ramification and runs inside, presumable to get orders from manager / Jon Ives and Steve Jobs personally. If those guys don’t have the 60’s style red Batphone set up today, I don’t know when they do. Which means: they never do.
Ok… There are now two lines, coming from opposite directions, one short, one long. Maybe there is a batphone! Maybe short one is for non-iphone purchases (goons maybe snapped out of it). Maybe I should buy a macbook too so I can get in the short line…seems reasonable. Don’t need a macbook. still seems reasonable. Tiring of this scene.
4:00pm
Got sick of that scene, now walking back to my car, evaluating plan B. Need to be at steve’s in about two hours. Two girls walking through garage, overhear them: “I can’t believe those idiots are standing in line to give Apple their $300, then AT&T their $130 a month.” I want to tell these wenches to shut their watering holes, because we’re talking about the iPhone. Show respect. But it would do no good. They don’t understand. A Plan is formulating. I could still have justice today.
4:30pm
Now driving in concentric circles (ever-widening) around northern virginia hitting “legitimate” at&t retail stores (since the resellers don’t have them), hoping to score, licking my lips, ready to win.
First one I hit was in fairfax at the corner of 29 and 50. There was iphone 3g material and banners in the windows. It was packed, and there was a guy at the door with a clipboard of names and a pen. I figured these were good omens, but the feeling didn’t last.
‘Hello dere!’ Handing me pen. ‘Are you here for non-iphone-related-blah-blah-woof-woof-promotion-for-some-crappy-non-iphone?’. This was bad, but I’m not an asshole. ‘Hi! No! I’m here for an iphone. Do you have any?’ Confused look. ‘No, we don’t have those..’
Yes, of course. After all, why would you? Its not like you work for one of the only two retail outlets selling them, and its not like its the biggest retail event of the year. My bad for asking. I hand him his pen back without stabbing him in the eye with it.
Now in chantilly va at a mega strip-mall. Did you know that best buy (this one, anyway) now sells apple computers and musical instruments? Huh. No iPhones. Hungry like the wolf.
Have learned that if you send a text to googl (no e), with a search string, it sms’s you back with data. Thanks, Mike. 2% safer than googling on blackberry while driving on route 66…
5:30pm
Hit AT&T stores all over hell and gone (Chantilly, Centreville, Fairfax, etc etc etc), no joy. Consider going to Apple Store at Fair Oaks mall, but am now 30 minutes away from steve’s, and need to be there in 30 or so. Fair Oaks is probably a mess anyway.
Get email from my boss, who is begging me to hold off / buy a unit through our i.t. when we’re ready. He’s a good man. He’s trying to do the right thing. unfortunately his message has a legitimacy issue due to the fact he already owns a first gen iphone. But he’s still full of ideas:
omg. how about if you buy an ipod touch to hold you over? 97.946% of all iphone time is consumed by things that don’t involve a phone (these stats are conservative). the app store, omg, is the sigle-most dangerous thing to have at your fingertips. btw, mobileme/push functions are just now starting to work occasionally. IPOD TOUCH!!
to which I respond:
My issue with the touch is the distinct lack of phone.
I don’t have disposable income for hold-overs. I need the real thing. Kelley (ed. my wife) has cleared me for iphone purchase.
But thanks for trying to help.
after which i’m mocked for my married-ish behavior.
6:00pm
Arrive at Steve’s. He has downloaded iPhone 2.0 for his first gen, and shows me Super Monkey Ball (irritating), Pandora (awesome XM-radio killer), and an app that makes lightsaber sounds when you whip your phone around (like a lightsaber). I almost leave immediately (five minutes after arrival) to go back to clarendon and get online. But unfortunately Boss Tom has called me again and asked me firmly to promise not to get an iPhone until I can get it through i.t. / switch my cell number over. I cave. I feel so worthless.
Another apple nerd at Steve’s party, “Dan”, tells me that he and his wife were are Fair Oaks earlier in the day to check out the Apple Store scene / potentially breathe on an iphone 3g. He indicated that line was over 200 idiots long (how quickly I turn to eat my own when failure is complete), and ran from the store itself into the center part of the mall, where disney-style rope line-controllers had been set up. Awesome. Guess it’s good I held off on fair oaks.
Bitter Afterword — stop reading now
Thank you, Apple, for making it impossible to buy your product. In this case, it wound being for the better. Still, I hate you for it, since I could, at this moment, be using an iPhone I paid $300-out-of-pocket for, as opposed to the hypothetical one I’ll be getting (maybe for less, who knows what I can negotiate) in the future. Too tired to be filled with rage. Beer will help ease the pain.
But I want to make sure, not that anyone at apple (or anyone at all) is actually reading this, that I make something clear. This experience, no matter how negative, is not going to keep me from buying an iphone. It’s not like there’s another option I’m interested in. It was easy to hold off on the gen one due the price, lack of Exchange integration, and the certainty of apple gen-1-technology-itis. I’m not going to be childish and go buy a zune or some other piece of shit just because apple decided the iphone had to be activated in-store, then didn’t remotely have the infrastructure ready to handle it. I’m going to get an iphone, just like I’m going to keep buying macs, because I am a nerd and I like the way apple products make me feel about myself. I’ve owned a current mac since my dad bought me a mac 512k when i was a young punk playing Deja Vu and Falcon. Clearly there’s no illusion re: what I’m writing this on. say my name, bleyotch.
I’m just going to bitch about it, as I have here, and leave off with an open question to whoever at apple, in some parallel universe, reads this: does it make you feel good to irritate your loyal customers, or even your first time ones? I’m also a shareholder (2002 was a good year to buy apple stock), so if there is some secret sauce in the formula that directly/positively impacts shareholder value, I’d love to hear about it.
If I wanted to wait in lines, I’d go back to russia… which I’ve never been to. Get it?
[1] While this somewhat orbits the truth, it’s not quote so. But still somewhat. I want to avoid slander-lawsuits. Oh no:
a) People in line asking if the store would stay open after scheduled closing hours if there were people in line and stock in store. ie, would people just be sent home arbitrarily at 9PM?
“We’re not going to answer that.”
b) “Will you at least tell us and keep us updated on what stock levels are, so we, standing in line, can estimate if there’s any point of us standing out here?”
“No. We would never do that.”
