After Nearly 100 Hours in Line, San Francisco’s First iPhone 5

baddox 13 years ago |

And, a few hours later, I queued up at the same Apple store and walked out of the store 20 minutes later with my iPhone 5. I suppose you can never know in advance, but this time they still had hundreds in stock at noon.

dmix 13 years ago | |

The scarcity of iPhones at launch is a fabrication. The primal human instinct to be lured by scarcity even trumps rational minds.

baddox 13 years ago | | |

It's not always a fabrication, it's just difficult to predict. It was quite difficult to get an iPhone 4S for many days after its release.

qq66 13 years ago | | |

Just out of curiosity, why is there an emphasis on getting the iPhone so soon after release (unless you are a developer who needs it for testing)? You'll have your phone for 2 years -- why it is worth spending 2 whole work-weeks in line to get the phone 5 days earlier?

dguaraglia 13 years ago | | |

Wrong, if you are the average Apple fanboy (and oh, don't get me started, there are plenty of those, I sit for lunch every day with two of them) you'll have the phone until the next one comes out. Why? Don't ask me, I guess it's the success of Apple's selling its brand as a 'lifestyle'.

rhizome 13 years ago | |

Yep, my Facebook feed is filled with peoples' pictures of phones they bought at lunch today, even in time to snap a pic of the Space Shuttle flying over San Francisco.

ChuckMcM 13 years ago |

Ok, that is some epic PR right there. Nice job. I really like a creative campaign like that.

I was sort of wondering why one of the live flight tracking services didn't jump on the Shuttle fly by in the Bay Area today to provide live tracking of its location.

golakers 13 years ago |

Saw the line outside the Apple store here in Pasadena this morning and thought "Task Rabbit".

Now the REAL question, how much did this guy make for his 90 hours of standing in line???

swang 13 years ago | |

I was going to say, "it's in the article" then I went back and realized it's not in the post (I think it was in previous posts about it).

Kinda surprised since they could have done a lot of PR with, "THIS GUY MADE 1500!"

Permit 13 years ago | | |

I thought so too, but it turns out he only made about 16.70 an hour. All things considered it was decent enough for a one time thing, but thats really not that much money.

qq66 13 years ago | | |

Many people have lots of trouble finding even $10 jobs these days! Plus, those are the people who are most likely to sign up to be TaskRabbits. Furthermore, he can read, sleep, play videogames, etc. while getting paid.

I'd say he got a great deal.

kenferry 13 years ago | |

$1500. He mentioned on twitter.

eckyptang 13 years ago |

I genuinely don't get it. Can someone please explain why the hell anyone would queue up like this?

Food, water, medicine, supplies - yes.

Shiny telephone - no.

glhaynes 13 years ago | |

They consider it fun, something to do, a chance to hang around for a little bit with some people that are interested in some of the same things they're interested in.

nicolethenerd 13 years ago | | |

This. When the iPhone 4 came out, I hung out in the queue for two hours even though I wasn't planning to purchase a phone (I was keeping a friend company who was in it for the long haul). It was a lot of fun and we met some cool people.

michielvoo 13 years ago | |

In this particular case (Charlie H.) it's a PR stunt.

evanlivingston 13 years ago |

Doesn't this PR work underline the darker side of TaskRabbit, or at least clearly demonstrate that TakRabbit is leveraging income disparity to profit? That is, some people either want or need money enough that they are willing pull a 90 hour shift so someone else with spare money can get an expensive phone arbitrarily early.

sbov 13 years ago | |

If they were doing anything other than holding a place in line, maybe.

It has the potential to become exploitive, but until companies start hiring employees through task rabbit in batches of 90 hour shifts, I'm not going to worry about it.

brcrth 13 years ago | |

So what's wrong with this? People are not being forced to do anything.

tfe 13 years ago | |

Isn't that how our economy works?

rhizome 13 years ago | |

The entire concept of employment hinges on one person giving another money. Just because you can call it something scary-academic like "leveraging income disparity," doesn't change the facts and doesn't make it wrong. Where then is the darkness?

kanamekun 13 years ago |

This is really well done promotion and PR! You can see that TaskRabbit PR even hired TaskRabbits to create further good visuals: "TaskRabbits gave pastries to San Francisco’s iPhone 5 fans." This sort of focus on visuals is the mark of a true professional.

And also, all photos were posted online and are available for reporters to use for future stories. (The only thing that could make this better is if higher-rez versions were available online, for reporters to download and use in future stories.) Great job, guys!!

codex 13 years ago |

In an alternate universe, I spent five minutes pre-ordering my iPhone and had it by 9:30 a.m. I feel like such a chump. I should have hired a TaskRabbit to do that for me.

biznickman 13 years ago |

This was a great PR stunt by task rabbit!