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Friday, September 21, 2012

CAMPING OUT AT BETHESDA ROW APPLE STORE - IN LINE FOR iPhone 5 [PHOTOS]

BETHESDA LINE
PALES AGAINST NYC

Another Robert Dyer @ Bethesda Row Exclusive

While New York's iPhone fanatics waited outside every night for the last week, ahead of today's iPhone release, Bethesda Row's Apple sidewalk was dead, dead, dead.

You may be forced to relinquish your Hipster Cards, Bethesda, should Forbes and the other "Top 10 Towns for ________" curators get wind of this Apple Apostasy.

Fortunately, by last night at 7 PM, a contingent of 6 brave souls had stepped forward to save us from an international embarrassment.  Yes, 6 people who realized that blankety-blank percent of life is just showing up, finally showed up.  As the hours passed, more joined them, to spend the night in the warm glow of the Apple logo, with promises of nothing more than a few slices of pizza.  Maybe.


If it seemed that there were more reporters asking questions than actual iPhone buyers in line, well, it wasn't just your night-before giddiness getting the best of you.  That Mix 107.3 van out front?  Uh, actually, they were across the street for the dog event on Bethesda Lane at Redwood.  Arf!

Personally, I think the new iPhone is a worthy competitor that does get trumped in several categories by the Samsung Galaxy S III.  There should be a good turnout throughout the morning, but it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle:  the fact is, the excitement level just wasn't there.  We know that, because the live bodies weren't there lined up all week outside the store.


iPhone 5 is anything but a failure.  But the response here in Bethesda is a warning to Apple:  the quality is there, but the magic is gone.  What's needed in an iPhone 6, is a feature, a concept, a revolution that brings the magic back.  What that is, has never been up to us, the consumer; Steve Jobs gave us products and features we never imagined or thought we needed.  The problem now is that Steve Jobs is gone.  Let's face it, the Google Glass presentation blew away any of the post-Jobs Apple product reveals.

Jobs/Apple fans like me will always have a nostalgia and affinity for the brand.  But it takes more than that to excite the masses.


After finding 6 people outside the Apple Store T-minus 12 hours before iPhone 5, I do know what Apple needs to address.  "Help Wanted:  Visionary."

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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:42 AM

    Samsung is mostly just copying Apple and not innovating on their own. I agree Apple's latest phone is just an incremental update but it's difficult to come up with ground breaking innovations on a yearly basis. A good example is Microsoft which has a huge budget but still can't seem to win in this space.

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    1. Robert Dyer3:50 PM

      It is difficult to keep generating must-have products every year. In that respect, Apple's success has perhaps raised unrealistic expectations. My guess is that they have at least one more Steve Jobs creation under development. One with which he had greater input on than iPhone 5. I can't help but notice that competitors have made their greatest strides when Jobs' health reduced his level of involvement.

      The Galaxy S III is hard to top. 4.7 really beats 4.0 screens, and any map program without Street View just immediately seems like a runner up.

      But iPhone 5 is still a great phone in most other respects.

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