so does my iphone 3G finally make me cool?
an early adopter, a mobile phone user, a PC lover
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| Cons |
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JUL
21
2008
Before i get to the actual product - the iPhone 3G - I would like to say that I am what Apple calls "a PC" or as I prefer to describe it - an anti-Apple person. I think that besides their actual products (they often do the work really well) everything about this company is wrong. Not only do they promote evil corporate behavior such as proprietary software, they do so under the false pretense of being a laid back friendly company. And even though as I said before they make fairly good products, they consciously chose their marketing message to be as vain as possible - what matters is exterior appearance and who is 'cool'.
Now I was never a cool kid so I figured that now that I can afford it I will go and purchase myself a piece of social recognition. My first attempt to get the new iPhone 3G was at 7:30AM on August 11th 2008, 30 minutes before it was officially released in North America. Knowing that Apple shoppers pretend to be environmentally friendly and wanting to fit in, I cycled to the nearest AT&T store but I quickly realized that being cool is something you have to work harder at - there were already 200-300 people lined up. I quickly calculated that with 4 customer service counters and an average of 20 minutes per customer it would take me a whole day to acquire coolness and I decided i'd rather stay uncool than become an official fool.
Reports about the lines across the country kept pouring in, so on Saturday evening I decided to outsmart the system and drove to an AT&T store in a much less affluent neighborhood. Apparently poor people like to be cool too - the store looked like it had been ransacked and the iPhone 3G was sold out. On the way back home I decided to try again and stopped by the Apple store on 5th avenue, but at 9pm there was still 300 people in line and the security guy told me that anyway the line is closed now since they don't sell iPhones after midnight. How uncool! I always thought that cool people do everything after midnight.
On Sunday afternoon I thought that all the cool people are probably sleeping after clubbing all night with their new iPhones 3G and decided to brave the Apple store again. The cools might have been sleeping but the fools were up and running and 500 of them were standing in line in front of the Apple store. At this point I couldn't bear the idea of being uncool and at 3:24PM i joined the line. 4 hours and 28 minutes later I became cool.
Steve Jobs, the evil mastermind of the phenomena, said on Monday morning that a million people across the world have bought the iPhone 3G over the weekend. Assuming they each stood at least 3 hours on line it means that Apple is responsible for 3 million man hours going down the drain in order to become cool. Since only relatively well off people can afford an iPhone you can assume the average hourly pay is around $20. Now I am not saying that everyone who buys an iPhone does it in order become cool. But if you are willing to stand in line for 4 hours during the first weekend it is released you are probably doing it for that reason. That means 60-80 million dollars were wasted that weekend on line to become cool (and that's before the $199-$299 for the phone and at least $70 a month for AT&T service).
Oh, and by the way, the actual product, the iPhone 3G, is SO cool!
Last edited on Jul 22, 2008
Apple - iPhone 3G Cell Phone is recommended by maxumer
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