So I’m trying to get an upgrade to my wife’s iPhone 4s. Not that she necessarily wants an upgrade, but she dropped it on the tile the other day and it’s got spiderweb cracks in the back now.
So I go to the Sprint store today (knowing that it will be a mad house tomorrow) and ask to get an iPhone 5s for her. (We had previously decided that the 5 was good enough for us.) They tell us that to get a 32g phone, it will cost $300, which is ironically the same price as a brand new iPhone 6 with 64g of memory.
Armed with this new knowledge, I decided that I’d just wait until after the 19th and go back and get the 6. Unfortuneately, I’ll have to fight with every idiot who thinks that their iPhone 5 that they just got a year ago is now obsolete, and they have to have the newest of the new.
I guess my question is this - has anybody ever stood in line or endured some hardship to get the lastest technological gadget or toy on the day it came out? (XBox One, PS4, Tickle Me Elmo) What’s your opinion of those who do?
Personally, I have not. I’ve only watched two movies the day they came out, and that was because I was dragged to them. (the last two Matrix movies, in fact) I just feel like my time is better spent than waiting in line or fighting a crowd than to be the first kid on the block to own a new toy.
I waited in line for the xbox back in college. Me and a buddy grabbed some beer and got in line a couple hours early. It was pretty much like tailgating, which - as someone that’s been to a ton of Chiefs games - comes pretty naturally for me.
A friend of mine told me that his friend in HS waited in line for a couple of days for a video game system in college (maybe the PS2?). There were three of them and they waited in 8-hour shifts.
Two hours before the store opened, a guy offered to buy their place in line (not the console–just the place in line) for $1,000. They took the offer.
If there is truly a line like this, you should hire some Mexican guys to wait in line for you - up front the capital to buy iPhones, sell for premium, and split the cut with them.
Probably not a good idea, because if give Mexicans money up front, you’ll probably be without money and without iPhones. (That’s what the NBA owners say, anyway.)
I wish I’d waited in a queue to buy a PS4 last xmas, instead i ended up spending more on an xbox one that takes hours updating everytime i switch it on.
I do the exact opposite of waiting in line for the newest and best. I wait until a couple of months after the newest and best comes out and then I buy the 2nd newest for a relative song.
I did wait in line for tickets once though, for the UT/KU basketball game my 2nd year. I ended up missing the game though because a potential employer flew me out to DC for an interview the day of the game. UT lost and I didn’t get an offer, so pretty much an all around bad experience.
I just bought a white PS4 on release day, ordered it online months ago though.
There’s nothing I want badly enough to stand in a queue for days. Maybe if somebody invented a one-use, auto-BSD machine that instantly strapped a Patek to your wrist, keys to a Wraith, and deposited a billion bucks into your bank account, then maybe.