Would You Line Up For A New Phone?

In Sydney, the queue for the iPhone 6 is tremendous. It stretches around the corner from the Apple Store on George Street, down King, around onto York, around onto Market. It’s an easy 500 metres long. But in about 24 hours, I bet there won’t be a queue at all. So why are people lining up at all?

Part of it is the spectacle. These people want to be a part of something exciting, and this is undoubtedly the most exciting iPhone launch at least since the 4. Part of it is the exclusivity; I am a tiny bit envious of anyone who gets an iPhone 6 today. The rational part of my brain, though, realises that stock levels will even out after a few days, the artificial scarcity will disappear, the new iPhone won’t seem so alluring and revolutionary and magical, and the hype will die down.

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But for now, it’s all just a bit crazy. The line in Sydney at the moment is about half a kilometre long. It would take you 10 minutes to walk from the rear of the queue to the front, if you weren’t actually waiting behind a couple of thousand other people with the same idea. This is incredible, honestly — the only other way you’d see this kind of queue in Sydney is if Gelato Messina started selling a cronut-frozen yoghurt fusion co-engineered by Heston Blumenthal and Tetsuya Wakada.

So, I want to get an idea of what you, our readers, think. Put the fact that this is an iPhone launch out of your heads. Is there any solid, rational, normal reason that you’d line up for a smartphone on the day of its release? Or for any other technology device? Or anything? Let us know in the comments.


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