This article is more than 1 year old

Glasgow fanbois keep the faith at iPhone 6S benefaction

Cheering and rigidly ordered queueing witnessed at Jesus phone eucharist

Interesting images have reached us of the ritual surrounding the dispensing of Apple's new iPhone 6S to the faithful of Scotland.

The pictures – sent to us by long-time Reg Scottish Apple queue correspondent Joseph Heenan – clearly show the rigid orthodoxy which has recently been enforced around such events.

Far from the vast, carefree crowds of zealots which accompanied earlier releases, the implementation of timed slots to collect pre-bought devices meant that an orderly succession of believers could safely and rapidly be processed to collect their shiny blessing.

According to our man on the ground, the staff “seem to be getting people in & out at a good rate, so I guess they have a decent amount of stock.” Either that, or Apple launches aren’t the big box office that they used to be.

As can be seen from the images, the security around the frighteningly well-regimented queue was protected by fences, with hi-vis jacketed guards in the gap between them. Whether this was to generally keep order, to protect the people of Glasgow from the rabid fanbois or to protect the fanbois from the people of Glasgow was not immediately obvious.

apple_iphone6s_queue_glasgow_v1_648

Glasgow fanbois brave the pleasant September morning sunshine to receive their blessings. Image: Joseph Heenan

Heenan commented that the faithful were “keeping the cheering up for a lot longer than last year (it's 09:30 now and they're *still* at it)”. Whether this was spontaneous cheering from the acolytes themselves or the sort of enforced gaiety seen at North Korean mass games was also not clear.

iPad mini queue Glasgow store, credit Joseph Heenan

Queues for iPhone 6S much greater than for the iPad Mini, although that may have been the rain. Image: Joseph Heenan

Whatever the particular organisational details of the ceremony, however, it got a definite thumbs-up from our man north of the wall. As he told us:

Whole process was very well organised though, particularly the reservations system – they clearly had custom software on their iPads to deal with the reservations – I had a 09:00-09:15 reservation, arrived at the store at 08:59 and was out with my iPhone by 09:07!

Praise be to that. ®

Bootnote

Many thanks to Reg reader Joseph Heenan for the pics and observations.

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like