$4 gas (in the northeast, anyway), bank collapses, sluggish economic growth, pundits predicting recessions, bear markets, $140 oil, $900 gold, rampant foreclosures, and a plummeting dollar!
Oh my.
But for those of you quaking at the specter
of Depression, or waiting in line at a California bank to retrieve your hard-earned cash (where you are reading this post on your 3G-enabled mobile device, natch), or those who are convinced that their money is surely safer in a mason jar under the mattress than an FDIC-insured institution, let me offer these comforting statistics:
- On Friday and Monday (“work” days, high 80s and sunny in New York), people waited up to ten hours in line to buy a $300 cell phone.
- On Saturday and Sunday (89 degrees and sunny in New York), people waited up to ten hours in line to buy a $300 cell phone.
- As of 9 PM Monday night, there was not a single $300 cell phone (for which people waited up to ten hours in line) in the entire state of New Jersey. An intrepid reporter found that there were 21 states where one would have to suffer the indignity of not even being PERMITTED to wait up to ten hours in line to buy a $300 cell phone, because there were none to be had.
Don’t read this as an indictment of the people who stood in line. I’ll happily admit I know these wait times because, in my desperate need to 3G-ify myself, I made no fewer than five calls to various Apple stores over the weekend, even stopping by one on the way to the beach on Sunday to see whether their line was less than ten hours – it was, at a mere four, but they had capped the line because lucky Mr. Minute 240 represented the last phone they had in stock.
Folks, there is nothing to worry about. Our gadget-driven economy has never been stronger. As long as we fanboys can find both the scratch and the time, including taking a day off from work(!), to queue up by the sweaty thousands for a shot at the latest shiny bauble (OK, mobile communications device with blazing fast TM internet access, location-awareness, and a shiny, shiny interface), we can find a way to ensure tha the American economy remains a juggernaut. Jeremy posited that Apple is really the only company that can do hype right, but I don’t think he’s taken it far enough. Buttressed by Jobs-obsessed tech acolytes like you and me, the company has the ability to single-handledly (multi-touchedly?) drive the consumer engine of this great nation until our worries of collapsing mortgage giants and $100 fill-ups are things that we tell to our kids via a Sling application running on the latest 5G Apple iBrain.
But first things first: can someone give me a ride to the Apple store? I’m kinda short on gas money these days.
Great points here Dan. I have a similar feeling when I walk into a Best Buy on the weekend and see swarms of people buying plasmas and new Xbox games. Guess they’re all getting there on the bus?
Great job Dan, but those who disagree can keep their tin foil hats on because I’ll go one step further and say that I don’t believe that it is any coincidence that a bad economy is good for the Dems right now, and the fact that every night on the news I have to hear about the end of American life as we know it.
But don’t worry, the election is in a few more months when everything can go back to normal. So go ahead and buy up all the real estate you can afford in the time being.
Wow, at first I thought this a post from JT and having been the newest minted AMERICAN and drunk the cool-aid of capitalism (giving up the mores of SOCIALISM as a good CANADIAN should have) he was swinging for the fences or trying to incite a riot.
That said, the argument being flawed I honestly don’t know where to begin.
Indeed, fools lined up, and fools WILL CONTINUE to line up for junk and stuff and food and TV’s and ps3’s and xboxes and TICKETS to see BARNEY and the OLSENS! Who knows why they do this, but they do and it isn’t the metal benders, the bible belters, the corn pickers, the surfers or any ONE group the people who will do this cut a large swath across this great nation of 305MM people’s.
The device (at least 25-30% of them) was 199$. I have the feeling that of the “1MM sold”, at MOST 40% were sold in the good ol USOFA. The rest of the world was STARVED with either NO iphone or a crap 1G iphone that many wouldn’t even buy (although in many places abroad one didn’t even have to BUY the phone it was FREE today)
I think that there was certainly pent up demand for this product and many 1G buyers who wanted to upgrade.
But, we’re missing out on the impact of the cult of MAC. This is not your mothers book club demographic. This group has MONEY, education, need for affirmation, personality, and to some extent (students, consultants, free thinkers and artists) TIME on their hands.
The fact that there is money here, is similar to the fact that 94301 housing prices continues to rise and MBENZ sold record cars in the 1st quarter (granted, a new low end model and the baby SMART had an impact on that- they’re so cute:-)) and I STILL cannot get a reservation at Boulevard for the weekend of the 27th!!
There will always be a product and group buying, recession, stagflation, depression, what have you. Always, Always Always.
Follow up, tivoboy is current SHORT OIL and LONG APPLE, SNE amongst others.
Gee Dan, its hard to imagine our economy could grow at all if so many people are standing in line to buy an iPhone.
I can’t imagine how it will affect productivity when everyone starts playing Super Monkey Ball…
🙂
Congrats on the insensitive headline of the day. Hope it scores the Digg traffic that it deserves.