“Staff cheered as throngs of excited customers made their way into Apple’s flagship store in London,” BBC News reports.
“Apple fans keen to get hold of the handset had started queuing at stores overnight and numbers swelled to around 300 for the launch,” The Beeb reports.
“The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones described the scene in London as ‘mayhem,'” The Beeb reports. “He said before the doors opened at the store, Apple staff were walking up and down the lines of people ‘whipping them into a frenzy.'”
“The internet enabled handset has also gone on sale at more than 1,300 other stores around the UK with each customer limited to two handsets each,” The Beeb reports.
“The first European handsets were sold at the T-Mobile store in Cologne, Germany just after midnight on Friday morning,” The Beeb reports. “T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom said it had sold over 10,000 iPhones in Germany by late afternoon. ‘It was love at first sight,’ one 50-year-old man told Reuters news agency.”
“The iPhone will go on sale in France on 29 November and Asia in 2008,” The Beeb reports.
Full article here.
Check out more photos of Apple’s London iPhone launch: here.
LOL! nice.
I went to the Apple Store in Bluewater on way home, got there at 7pm and there wasn’t even a queue at the point-of-sale … for anything!
Walked up and bought a UK iPhone with no wait.
The front of the store was jammed with people looking at iPhone, no one buying though. Weird.
The BBC is calling it “mayhem”, because they know it won’t work with iShite, or whatever it is they call their Microshite only video service.
MDN sure loves calling the BBC the “Beeb”
“MDN sure loves calling the BBC the “Beeb””
Boob would be more appropriate.
I wish people would grow up and quit being lured by a cult product that really isn’t all that good.
I haven’t used my iPhone much at all. Prefering to use a laptop instead.
The iPhone is short on memory, battery life, speed and it’s clumsy to use.
It took me 10 minutes to get a correct address on the iPhone and less than 30 seconds on a laptop.
Well I guess all those people will need to find out for themselves how they got taken by a cult company.
I’m a long time Apple fan, but lately, in the last few years. I have been getting sick of them.
I don’t expect Apple to last the longterm under Steve Jobs. He’s in the process of burning everyone and everything out.
Once he’s done that, nobody will have anything to do with him.
Nanny – you dick
‘It took me 10 minutes to get a correct address on the iPhone and less than 30 seconds on a laptop.’
Try your fingers, rather than your toes next time, Nanny, you Ninny.
Mayhem?
The BBC coverage of the iPhone launch is Yellow Journalism at its finest. They really don’t like Apple, do they?
Nanny:
“I haven’t used my iPhone much at all. Prefering to use a laptop instead.”
Make a lot of phone calls on that laptop? Maybe you should have gotten an iPod Touch instead. Or a Classic.
“The iPhone is short on memory, battery life, speed and it’s clumsy to use.”
8GB gets me 1,000 songs, a bunch of podcasts, a couple of TV shows, and 300 photos. Battery life is better than my Treos ever were. Speed dialing takes a couple extra clicks, but I don’t need to fish out a stylus. As for web browsing, viewing photos, etc., the iPhone is way easier to use than any other mobile device I’ve seen. Try using that laptop to check your calendar while you’re standing on a crowded train. Now THAT’s what I call clumsy.
Frankly, your complaints just don’t make any sense to me.
you are a lying bore
please find your way to a different board
maybe a yahoo board on for morons
thanks
oh and don’t forget to *&%$ yourself
They also said the iPhone will be sold in Canada as soon as Ted Rogers is dead.
In related news, when asked if he would offer unlimited data downloads for the iPhone for $20 per month, Ted Rogers said, “Over my dead body”.
The Beeb is a well recognized standard abbreviation for The BBC, try http://www.beeb.com. You can sign up for an @beeb.com email address from ….. the BBC.
300 people in London is hardly mayhem and there are more than that being whipped in to a frenzy at London’s Torture Garden and similar venues most every night of the week.
Using phrases like, “Apple staff were walking up and down the lines of people ‘whipping them into a frenzy'”, is just another example of how subtle the Beeb’s propaganda is. It really is very clever how they use just one or two words to create a subliminal impression.
Nanny sounds frustrated that she can’t provide suckling any more.
@Nanny
Can you fit your laptop in your pocket?
How easy it is to carry it around?
Nanny can you account for the ninety percent approval rate that this product has produced in its buyers? Which is substantially above any other phone I note. Perhaps they are all just misguided fools, oh I can hear RC firing up his steam PC already. If you have intelligent comments, fine but such inept throw away conjecture and inaccuracies really doesn’t cut the mustard in the real world- be it reality or otherwise.
http://72.14.253.104/search?hs=sUq&hl=en&lr;=&c2coff=1&q=cache:http://www.dialaphone.co.uk/blog/?p=750&btnG=Search
Need I say more….but 1 store does not make a summer…
You may need to cut and past the link..original site is down…god bless WordPress
“The iPhone is short on memory, battery life, speed and it’s clumsy to use.”
Ok, ‘Nanny’ or should we call you STEVE BALLMER!
@Gandalf
You say “Using phrases like, “Apple staff were walking up and down the lines of people ‘whipping them into a frenzy'”, is just another example of how subtle the Beeb’s propaganda is. It really is very clever how they use just one or two words to create a subliminal impression.”
Unfortunately it’s what the Apple staff do though so the Beeb isn’t using subtle propaganda, they are just accurately describing what happens. I’ve been to Apple Store openings in the UK and I found the American style whooping and clapping annoying. It’s just not the way we normally do things here.
Anyway I find the paranoia about the Beeb’s supposed anti-Apple slants amusing.
Isn’t funny how the trolls always start out by saying that they are long time Apple fans?
why does american tv look so much better?
seriously why is uk tv so washed out and grey?
is it there a difference to the type of cameras they use?
“why does american tv look so much better?
seriously why is uk tv so washed out and grey?”
The UK is a dull dreary place. Too much color would upset the inhabitants.
Razor — the UK probably looks washed out and grey on US TV because most of the time it is just that.
10/10ths low grey cloud, steady drizzle out of the overcast – yup it sure is grey all right, especially this time of year!
Every now and again we get a blast of pure blue sky and clear sun, which makes up for a lot. And the Brits change character TOTALLY if we get more than four days of sunshine at a time
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Errr – Regent Street at 6 o’clock on a Friday night looks like that EVERY week of the year.
@AJK
Perhaps the “American-style” whooping and clapping isn’t “the way we do things” there, but I saw quite a bit of it during my visit there – and this was over 20 years ago.
@razor
Honestly, I find the more subtle uses of color (e.g., Torchwood) more appealing than the often-garish colors used on American TV. And, at least until digital TV is universal, the PAL system of television is far more accurate than NTSC (affectionately nicknamed “Never Twice Same Color”) used in American broadcast TV.
MW: already, as in “Enough criticism of the UK, already.”