So I went reading through a few stories of iPhone lines, ranging from Scoble to Engadget to Ars Technica and more (full list to follow). In these posts, stories are shared of lines ranging from 20 to 200 people in cities such as San Francisco, Palo Alto, Cincinnati, Tampa Bay, and New York, and they’ve been there for hours to days. Using just a little bit of math, the 11 cities I tracked represented 8790 person-hours of line-waiting. With 140 Apple stores nationwide (not even counting AT&T stores, by the way), this represents 7.8% of all stores. A tiny bit of extrapolation later and we have 111872 person-hours spent waiting in line (including Zooomr’s Kris Tate in live video, and the mayor of Philadelphia). The totals:
111872 person-hours.
4661 person-days.
12.77 person-years.
Thanks, Apple!
full list of sources:
- http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/06/thank_god_its_iday.html
- http://www.techmeme.com/070629/p33#a070629p33
- http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_6261313?nclick_check=1
- http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/29/iphone-multi-city-lineblog/
- http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/06/29/ars-in-line-for-the-iphone-in-cincinnati
- http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/huge-gallery/iphone-lines-across-the-usa-a-pictorial-gallery-by-you-273527.php
- http://blogs.business2.com/apple/2007/06/iday-live-blogg.html
- http://laughingsquid.com/live-coverage-of-apple-store-iphone-lines/
- http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070629/apple_iphone.html?.v=31
- http://gridskipper.com/travel/iphone/nationwide-iphone-line-gallery-272739.php
- http://blog.mahalo.com/?p=21
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Well… maybe you’re technically right on this 10 years of productivity thing, but you fail to mention that the “productivity” you factor in is most likely sitting in front of a TV, or a pc on the net -watching porn. Not much of a loss to humanity…
I think all the wasted time not only standing in some stupid line waiting and begging Apple to take your hard earned $ for a stupid, yet briefly entertaining GADGET, and also the time wasted USING these gadgets AND TV, Internet, etc.. would be much better spent doing things that have a positive outcome, like talking to your kids, going to a park with your wife and having a picnic, rescuing Feral cats, etc…
Thanks for the statistical estimate of how incredibly materialistic and stupid we have become…
-Jf
The crazy thing is that very few people actually had to wait in line. I was at an Apple Store tonight (Maryland) and they had stock of both models. Though they didn’t have the laptop stand I was looking for.
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I was third in line at my store, but luckily I had my laptop, two batteries, and a 3G card. You’ll have to subtract half a man day from your calculation for me… 😉
I think the iPhone will more than add the 10 years back, particularly as a productivity platform for web 2.0 apps. I wrote an extensive review of the iPhone in this capacity here:
http://blog.2glue.com/productivity/2007/07/mobile-web-20-p.html
I tried waiting in line a couple of times. Alas as a father of two small children I’ve been forced to come to terms with the fact that I can’t actually greedily take up 5 hr blocks of time to wait in line. I am needed at home for various rituals like bedtime and I sometimes need to go to.. you know.. my job. If the Apple store was open from 9 PM to 3AM, then maybe I could manage, but if the kids are up then those 5 hr blocks of time don’t happen.
The security guard on duty on Sunday estimated the line to only be 8 minutes long. I looked at the 200+ person line skeptically, but stood in it anyway. About an hour and a half later I’d gotten about 1/3 of the way to my goal, and gave up to go home for supper. Nearly all the of the people in line on Sunday looked to be students who probably are out of school for the summer. Perhaps they have nothing better to do, or are working part time at odd hours, but iPhones are currently only for those who don’t value their time, or who employ those that don’t.
This line stuff just isn’t working for me. I wish I could just order something through the Apple store or my account at AT&T online and have the phone show up in the mail. I plan to just put off my purchase for a few weeks until the lines go away and availability isn’t in question.
Personally, I don’t find the phone to be a trivial gadget like some here claim. It is useful to be able to manage my e-mail from away from my computer. It keeps my calendar and meeting schedule for work and warns me ahead of time about them, helping make sure I get to meetings. It is also my phone.