Once a year, there is a migration â€" or is it pilgrimage? To the Apple store to queue in vast numbers from an ungodly hour of the morning or night, to pay huge wads of cash for whatever iDevice the Californian company have allowed us to have…
How did I get into this, being a sensible Windows user with no love of Apple? Well, it’s all my brothers fault! He has drunk the Apple kool-aid and will buy whatever the fruit seller offers. It started two years ago when he told me he had queued from 6am at the Bluewater shopping centre (in Kent) to be the first of those to obtain a shiny new iPad 2. There was clapping and chanting and marching! All the trappings of a cult. I HAD to see this for myself. So I said to him that I would come with him the next time a new phone came out. (I had an iPhone 3GS at the time and had not bothered with the iPhone 4)
So last October I did it! I went with my brother to BlueWater at 5am, only to find 200 Chinese immigrants and their gang-master had beaten us to it! They were hogging the queue and were buying two phones each, to resell in Dubai for £1600 each (not the poor mules, the gang-master â€" a nasty little woman that security threw out in the end) â€" so our chances of getting any stock were slim. However, we were among those lucky few.
I got my 64Gb iPhone 4S, but now I was hooked. This was fun. Cult-shopping. Awesome!
So today...
3.10am. I walked out the house (so as not to wake everyone) and met my brother on the road (tracked him using my iPhone so I knew where he was â€" you stalker!)
We sped up the M2 and arrived at a cold and fresh and empty car park at BlueWater. As we left the car park a man passed us looking miffed and carrying a deck-chair. Strange…
3.45am. Walked into the brightly lit, deserted shopping centre and saw only a few people visible standing on the upper level near the Apple store. Better and better, we would be near the front of the queue!
Walking up the dead escalators revealed a different picture. There wasn’t just a few dozen, or even a hundred people in front of us, there were probably close to four hundred! The queue was double that of last year! Well that sucked, let me tell you.
Now, this year I had just come along as wing-man â€" I wasn’t going to buy an iPhone, but my brother was gutted. Weighing our alternatives, we decided to try a quick drive to the nearby (and dare I say more down-market) shopping centre at Lakeside, where another Apple temple resided.
The tunnel toll was free (an overnight thing â€" I’ve never been up early enough to witness) so the gods of Cupertino were smiling.
4.25am. We arrived at Lakeside to find all the parking barriers turned off. However as we drove around the ring-road, we could see movement. Parking in a barrier entry-slip, my brother turned off his headlights and got out. Outside the shopping centre, whose doors were still firmly closed, milled a crowd of some several hundred people. In a scene reminiscent of “Dawn of the Dead†they simply grouped in the light of the closed doors, waiting for the flesh-eating frenzy to begin.
Well this was no good. We couldn’t get into the car park and clearly many cars had been there all night (not even my brother is THAT keen).
Resigned to the fact this Apple store was also out of our reach, we took hemlock. Or MacDonalds breakfast â€" same thing really.
4.40am â€" The coffee from MacDonald’s had kicked in and after a brief council of war, we decided to return to BlueWater. At least there we could be disappointed in the warm; near a working toilet.
5.02am. Arrived back at the BlueWater queue, which had grown by fifty or so people.
6.00am. Apple priests in their blue robes began to appear and talk to the host. Okay, so some shop staff wandered down the queue and said “hiâ€.
6.10am A member of Apple staff passing, told us that despite our distant position in the queue, we would be “pleasantly surprised†by the abundance of iPhones they had in stock â€" our chances were good. My brother cheered up immensely at this news and we began a BlueTooth game of BattleShip to celebrate.
Time didn’t drag too much. I watched an episode of NCIS:Los Angeles on my wife’s iPad I had hijacked last night for this purpose. At some point some girls with a tea trolley from Costa came around with some coffee and tea. Bless ‘em!
8.00am the Apple store opened and with much cheering and clapping the entire store staff walked the ENTIRE length of the queue, selling fake enthusiasm. I didn’t buy any.
8.10am Men in blue with radios and iPads began walking the queue handing out cards. The system works like this: They have X iPhones in Black and White colours and in 16GB, 32GB & 64GB sizes and for each one, they have a store business card with sticker on it stating the colour and model. You say what you want and they give you the card. From that point you are guaranteed to get a phone.
9.25am The men in blue reached us and my brother got his card. Phew! The day was saved. Small children wouldn’t die and I wouldn’t have to see a grown man weep openly!
More coffee.
Toilet break.
10.30am an Apple store staff member reached us and asked the “magic†question “Are you buying SIM free, or do you need a SIM swap?†Now the correct answer â€" for a longer life â€" is to say “yes, I want to swap over my existing SIM to the new phoneâ€. At which point we were led like favoured children to the FRONT of the queue, right outside the store! Effectively jumping about 200 people in the queue. We didn’t rob them of their phone or anything, we just saved ourselves from being there another two hours.
10.44am. In the store and my brother is tearing the cellophane off an iPhone 5 box.
BUT… The side of the black anodised paint-job on the side of the handset has a fair-to-giant chip in it.
So, back in the box and unwrap phone number 2. This one is pristine and names and credit card numbers are exchanged at length.
At this point I sneaked off, picked up an iPad camera connector, scanned the barcode with the Apple Store App on my phone and paid for it via iTunes. Then put this swag in my backpack. It felt like shoplifting, so I went back to the iPhone 5 setup guy and asked the Apple staff for a bag, so I didn’t feel like I’d robbed the place.
11.03am finally we’re outside and heading for the Vodaphone store to find if ANYONE has an iPhone 5 case, because the Apple store had none. They didn’t either. But walking past the queue holding an Apple bag felt scary. Like walking past the Lion enclosure with the gate open. Weird. You hear the expression “undressed by their eyes†â€" I always knew what it meant, but now I have an inkling of how it feels.
11.15am No accessories or cases exist anywhere, at all, for the iPhone 5. Handy.
We head back to the car and go home.
Seven (nearly eight) hours, one breakfast, three coffees and a few toilet breaks later, the annual pilgrimage is over. See you all there next year.
You are a sad a deluded soul. I salute your dedication and I'm green with envy.
Now Galaxy S3 drop in price please :D
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Photobombing the Apple staff...
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