Apple Beijing store egged in botched iPhone 4S launch Apple closed its flagship store in Beijing after frustrated fanbois rioted and pelted the windows with eggs when they were told the shop didn't have the iPhone 4S. A crowd of 500 people waited outside the Sanlitun Apple store in Beijing yesterday morning for the Chinese launch of the iPhone 4S, and the mood turned ugly when …
The mall in Sanlitun that contains the Apple store actually consists of two unconnected bits. Between them is a little street filled with bars, stalls in which guys sell you barbecued meat on skewers, and little stores selling all kinds of stuff, as is typical in China. I would be astonished if eggs cannot be sourced there.
...if the store had opened and a stampede ensued, Apple would have been in a world of shit
Quite often you see videos of just how barbaric humans beings can be stampeding and fighting with one another over hard to get or much reduced consumer items, so I think this was a case of damage control come prevention.
What's most amusing to me about this is the difference between this article and the way the Beeb reported the same story. In theirs, the overnight wait isn't mentioned, their market share is "massive", etc.
Mondo is right, though, you don't open the doors in those circumstances. When I was a PFY, I worked at IKEA, and we would occasionally hear of stampedes happening at other stores in response to offers. Off the top of my head, three people died in a crush at the Jeddah store, and the new London one had one too, though no-one was killed.
Even at our Birstall store, I had to break up several fights in the years I worked there, with customers getting violent over stuff as stupid and inexpensive as candles.
I seem to remember hearing about a new stampede a year or two ago. Evidently they haven't learned.
Just gotta know the shortcuts, baby. ;-) What, you think the staff are gonna walk alllll the way round? Sod that. If you keep an eye out, hidden in the maddening floor plan are shortcut doors and alleys. At our store most people would take upwards of 45 minutes walking the route on a Sunday, but I could get across it in about a minute.
"Apple closed its flagship store in Beijing after frustrated fanbois rioted and pelted the windows with eggs when they were told the shop didn't have the iPhone 4S."
The other articles I read about this did not claim that the reason the fighting started was because the store did not have the phone, it was simply overcrowding.
Who to believe?
Depends entirely on two things:- (1) Time (2) The needs of the Author, for example;
In 1985 Ronald Reagan praised CIA-funded afghan mujahideen as "freedom fighters and declared March 21st to be “Afghanistan Day” (Proclamation 4908), however within a few short years Clinton and Bush were referring to the mujahideen as terrorists.
And this is not a particularly an American thing either, in WWII the Malaysians fighting along side the British against the Japanese they were freedom fighters, however when they wanted independence in the early 1950's they were terrorists.
BB for the ministry of truth.
The 4s a nice phone. I like mine a lot. But I just ordered one and they mailed it to me. NO phone is worth this level of fuss.
I don't understand people standing in line, or this insane phone evangelism that seems so rampant now. No matter the OS or the hardware its just a PHONE! The pixie dust not wear off if you wait a week.
If the newest phone is your biggest life crisis, you don't have any REAL problems.
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Sorry, I just could never understand people queuing for a phone or game etc...
so if you become cattle, don't be surprise to be treated alike.
Grow some personality, forget the toys, and go for a walk, muse over the fact that the society you live in is becoming dumber by the minute, and that we are manufacturing even dumber kids ...
downvote at will ^^
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