iPhone Enthusiasm Disrupts Operations at a Shipping Store (in a good way)

Last night I was in a store that specializes in sending packages (I don't need to name names here, the location is kind of irrelevant). I brought in a couple bags worth of Christmas presents that I wanted to ship out just before the store closed. Everything started out just fine and things were moving along quite smoothly.

While the employee is checking over my pathetic handwriting trying to get the shipping labels printed, she asks me to confirm something. Turns out I had pasted one of the addresses wrong on my "cheat sheet", so I whipped out the iPhone and went online to go get the address. This is when the bizarre behavior started. Everyone just kind of dropped what they were doing and looked over at my iPhone. There were a couple employees behind the counter and a guy there picking up boxes to be loaded onto a truck. I recall someone saying, "Oh hey look it's an iPhone".

This is where I started getting weirded out. This has happened to me before, but the last time it happened to me was when I whipped the phone out in a room full of programmers who had been asking me questions about web development for the iPhone. Last night, I was just going about my usual routine when the weirdness began.

So the owner (or a person who I assumed was the owner) started asking me questions about whether I like the iPhone and if I saw any downside to owning one. We then started to chew the fat about the quick price drop, the rebate, store credit, and the availability of 8GB. While chewing the fat, I'm flipping through feature after feature, showing stuff to the employees behind the counter (who really should've been finishing up the shipping labels for me...).

I ended up showing them a few features that made them all go "ooo" and "aaaah", including showing them how I could track packages online using Safari on the phone. I did, in all fairness, mention that there were any number of other devices from which you can have all of these features and potentially more. This didn't phase them, they were looking at a device that made them drop everything. To be honest, I imagine it would feel similar if I had grabbed an internet-enabled Cabbage Patch Kid, jumped into the Wayback machine with Mr. Peabody and whipped the doll out in a Toys R Us in the mid-80s in front of a mob of rabid shopping soccer moms. This wasn't just enthusiam, this was fervor.

It's a testament to the buzz-machine that is Apple. They have managed to create a brand that doesn't just inspire curiosity or simple enthusiasm, or even 'buzz', its flat-out fantaticism. In those who are not turned into fanatics by marketing, word of mouth, or whatever magic fairy dust Apple is feeding into the world's water supply, it manifests like it did at this shipping store last night. There is no other portable consumer electronics device that has ever elicited such a reaction from non-techies and non-geeks before. I'm not generally the most outgoing guy when not expounding on in-depth technical programming topics, so you know there's some funky stuff in the air when people go out of their way to ask me questions about my phone.

So, whether or not you feel that the iPhone is worthy of such devotion on the part of those who own it and those who lust after it, you have to admit... a device that has managed to capture the interest, fanaticism, and fervor of so many people is definitely a device on which I want my applications to be running.

Once I'm done assimilating all of this new MVC stuff from Microsoft, I'll get back to my iPhone and Cocoa programming. Really I think we just need to go to a 48-hour day so I have enough time to explore all of the cool tech that needs exploring.

tags: iphone  

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