celebrities and actors have been used since the down of time by shady companies to push low quality and badly design junk.... Apple is selling the most useless piece of junk ever made and it make sure the every human with a single digit IQ is getting one. As Iphone sales proves, this is quite a sizable portion of the population.

While I agree that it's pathetic to pay actors to generate hype, they're hardly the first to do it. Interesting they'd have to do it for the iPhone.

Mr. Mectron, your bashing of the iPhone to me is a symptom of a jerk and a closed mind. Fine if it's not for you- so f*cking what?!? Why spew your ignorant bias? Buy the phone that you want- it's your choice. But a lot of rather smart folks have in fact chosen the iPhone, and that is their choice. Say what you want about the fanaticism around Apple, but give them their due- they put out a good product that perhaps you just don't like yourself. Be objective in your comments, instead of opening your mouth for the world to see the fool.

I don't have an iPhone because I work for a competitor. That doesn't mean I can't admire it and use it as inspiration in my company (a certain Finnish one) to improve the user experience.

>>>While I agree that it's pathetic to pay actors to generate hype, they're hardly the first to do it. Interesting they'd have to do it for the iPhone.

Them not being the first doesn't make it any less entertaining.

>>>Mr. Mectron, your bashing of the iPhone to me is a symptom of a jerk and a closed mind. Fine if it's not for you- so f*cking what?!?

Interesting that the person accusing someone else of being a jerk is the only one mock-swearing...

>>>Why spew your ignorant bias? Buy the phone that you want- it's your choice.

On what grounds do you call him ignorant. Perhaps he himself purchased and iPhone, and has been dissatisfied with the service, making him a far more presentable commentator than yourself. The point is, you have no idea what he knows about the iPhone, if anything, so to call him ignorant makes you guilty of the same.

>>>But a lot of rather smart folks have in fact chosen the iPhone, and that is their choice.

No one is saying otherwise.

>>>Say what you want about the fanaticism around Apple, but give them their due- they put out a good product that perhaps you just don't like yourself.

Bias? What? If you've never used the product, on what grounds are you able to say it's "good"? The "good"ness of the product is your (admittedly uninformed) opinion

>>>Be objective in your comments, instead of opening your mouth for the world to see the fool.

Thus spake the man who claims a product that he doesn't possess is "good". Objective?? Right. Pot, meet Kettle.

>>>I don't have an iPhone because I work for a competitor. That doesn't mean I can't admire it and use it as inspiration in my company (a certain Finnish one) to improve the user experience.

So basically, you have company sanctioned iPhone-envy. You're using the iPhone as your guiding light to improve your own product. Ahh, now I see why you're so touchy. If the iPhone in fact complete crap, then your product, patterned after it, would also be complete crap. And therein lies the rub - you don't want to hear anyone else talk bad about that which you have idolized.

Well I've got news for you pal - you don't get to tell someone else to be objective while being biased yourself. In fact, you don't get to tell someone else to be objective at all. You're on the internet for crying out loud! If you haven't figured out that everyone has an opinion, and that opinions, by their very nature, are biased, then you really should just stop trying...

for two reasons -

1) They are available now since Osama Obama scared them out of Georgia (Obama actually thought the Russians were in Atlanta) and they have already threathened Poland anyway, so they're on the way.

and

2) Everyone knows the Russia is run by a massive Arrogant Maniacal Rotten Cutthroat Bastard ..... wait, is that Putin or Stevie Jobs? .... BOTH!

Actors in line to PRETEND people are actually interested in a Commie Chinese Sweatshop made POS Buggy iPhone ..... I suspect this has gone on everytime Apple has done an intro of ANY of their gadget products.

Thats it :)

... It is Orange Poland that thought of and paid for this gimmic, not Apple. The rest of these comments are just fanboi and anti-fanboi flames that have nothing to do with the fact that Orange, not Apple, decided to 'prime the pump'.

I've used mobile phones constantly since the early 1990s and various PDAs including Palm, Psion and Windows CE based for ten years, Apple has made an excellent job of the iPhone. Remember they've only been in the Market for little over a year. I find this constant repetition of extremist positions about the phone noting and unimaginative. And yes, this post was made from my iPhone whilst on holiday.

Well, it should be pretty clear to anyone who bothers to think about it that a product that is actually as good as it claims would not require "artificial means" to make it a success. Perhaps there is a correlation between the amount of applied "spin" and the creators' lack of faith in their own products....oh, did I hear someone muttering about a certain operating-system?

An (i)Phony performance

@Fanboi Jeff, experts in radio engineering have stated its a pile of crap but fools like you and their money are soon parted

@Webster, taken my eye off the international politics ball of late (due to work) so cant comment on your first point but I second your second point.

Evil Jobs is laughing his ass off at fools like you Jeff

The Jesus phone as a standalone product at it's current price / tariff is pure tat, it has a limited feature set compared to most up to date high end phones - FFS my 3 year old ipaq is capable of more, even my lad's 20 quid mobile is able to out perform the Jaysus phone on some tasks!

A tidy appearance and a pretty user interface do not a good product make, and it looks like the Polish have recognised that from day one.

if Orange say "we've sold ten million units in Poland, we're a huge success" and it turns out they're lying, doesn't someone, somewhere end up in court?

Isn't suggesting "we have hundreds of people queueing to buy!" equally barefaced lying?

(Yeah I know it's something people do, I'm asking why/whether it's legal?)

What if you were a /real/ customer who queued for hours to get one - wouldn't you be pretty pissed to find out most of your time was wasted because Orange thought it would look good to have a bunch of extras queue round their store.

Fake queues help postpone the manufacturers' nightmare but inevitable prospect - when flashing the latest phone is as cool as flashing the latest calculator.

But then again , who really cares anyway , however if some one were to introduce an open source version of the jesus phone in Poland minus all the evil cupertino pirate controls , the sales of said item would sell faster then any old ABBA CD reissued every five years or so , that be for sure !

@ Glenn, I dont own an iPhone and don't feel the need to, but I can tell you, a tidy appearance and a pretty user interface DO make a great mobile phone product. That's what the average consumer wants, a phone thats easy to use, does simple things well, is stable, robust and offers decent battery usage. I'd classify myself as a typical consumer, and at the moment have an HTC diamond and blackberry pearl, but the phone I like the most is my 2 year old SE W810, its nice and simple.

it's a phone, some people will like it, others won't. What Orange Poland do to promote their products is their business and is nothing to do with any other country, for the sake of the bigots on here, both pro & anti iPhone, it's called advertising and promotion or do you idiots only buy unadvertised products.

Mine's the one with "Just Grow Up" on the back

For everyone to put their handbags down, count to ten and then kiss and make up.

We start with a dumbass anti-Apple rant, see some put-downs of anyone daring to spare a good word the Jeebus-Phone, have a Webster Phreaky post pushed into our faces and get to admire the sad spectacle of "I can has hate too" felchposts exuded by random soapboxers.

These Apple-baiting articles really attract a lot of flies.

The iphone is a piece of sh*t and nobody wants one.

Well done poland for telling apple where they can shove their overpriced white plastic rubbish.

I guess the real aim of Orange Poland is to create publicity -- good or bad, doesn't matter. Just that it stays within peoples' heads that Orange Poland is selling iPhones. So people will fail to remember that Era (competetive mobile operator) is selling them also.

I guess they had to admit they hired actors -- how would they explain there are no queues in front of Era? Perhaps they thought Era will hire actors too. ;)

And as for queues themselves, I guess Polish hearts are sterner. Hey. many a person still remember Soviet ehm... "friendship" times, whem shops were empty and queues were longish. It does not stirr any positive emotion.

Has anyone thought that Orange Poland took the laurels for paying actors to queue at the behest of Apple, so we don't rumble that Apple have been paying queue actors worldwide !

"Apple must need some serious missionary merchandising there if carriers need to call in the bold and the beautiful"

What a specious piece of reporting. It was, of course, Orange and not Apple that did the deed.

If you can't at least get the simple stuff right perhaps you should rename The Register to Jackanory. Cheap shots tend to ricochet back at those that fire them off.

Alien - because aliens are more credulous than some Register articles on Apple of late.

OK, I deserve the chastisement. Perhaps unwise to yell to the other person that they are the one yelling at you.

I think overall they make a good product, I think the UI is fantastic, and I have used one, so I'm not uninformed. And they have iTunes, which is the other half- it's quite a bit better than most other phone management software provided by the manufacturers.

What bugged me about the first post was not so much that Mectron didn't like the iPhone- he/she is welcome to have any opinion about the product they want, it was the statement that effectively anyone who disagrees is a moron, i.e., someone who likes the iPhone or would own one. That was what prompted my overreaction.

Because I think they have some good products does not make me a Fanboi. I dislike that Apple is mum when they do have problems. They pretend bugs don't exist while quietly releasing fixes for them. That does bug me, and I think that Jobs, though he has a very keen and sharp consumer vision, is an ass. I wouldn't want to work there.

Thanks for the rips- nothing like a little humble pie for breakfast!

(Paris because her pie is anything but humble)

This is hardly news.

If Orange Poland had paid for actors, and been exposed for doing so by a third party, then it would be news. But as things stand:

"Nothing to see here. Move along, folks."

In Soviet Russia, phone company pays you to get iPhone!

Mine's the one with the chipped, scuffed - but still superior - HTC Hermes in the left pocket

"Well, it should be pretty clear to anyone who bothers to think about it that a product that is actually as good as it claims would not require "artificial means" to make it a success.

It's not artificial at all: it's exploiting one of the 6 fundamental modes of human persuasion: social proof. See Robert Cialidini's "Influence: the science of persuasion".

You can laugh at it all you want but it's a legitimate strategy for getting people to buy. It works. That's why marketers do it (cue the smug but ignorant outpourings by solipsistic nerds and geeks who claim they're never influenced by advertising or marketing).

Warmly,

Jon

>>>>>>Why spew your ignorant bias? Buy the phone that you want- it's your choice.

>>>On what grounds do you call him ignorant.

I think we can take "Apple is selling the most useless piece of junk ever made" to be pretty ignorant. While Mr Mectron is quite entitled to have his own needs and desires it is rather ignorant (and arrogant) to superimpose them on every phone user in the world. I know several people with this device (not myself) who find it extremely useful, at a stroke negating Mr Mectron's assertion.

So I'm with Jeff, Mectron is ignorant and you are king of the straw men.

Oh and the article was about Orange Poland and not really Apple/iPhone. Yet another wonderful hatchet job there El Reg

I read these comments with bemusement bordering on horror. It seems anti-Apple fanboyism is just as rabid an affliction as its opposite. Get a life, people! (I've been told that having one is really kinda cool.)

I must note that it is interesting that only a microscopic minority of PC / non-iPhone -users really feel passionate about their tool of choice. Certainly, our favourite troll wouldn't get half as much puerile satisfaction teasing, say, Nokia users instead of iPhone users. The Nokia users just wouldn't give a flying fuck. I certainly don't.

i've been hiring polish actors to read webster's posts. it saves me having to do it.

..is if a third party revealved that Orange Poland were only claiming to have hired actors, and the punters were real- as the actors story garnered more publicity.

Wait, even more amusing if they hired actors and got an astroturfer to claim that they were lying and they were real punters really, as that gained loads of.. argh, my head!

>>>Isn't suggesting "we have hundreds of people queueing to buy!" equally barefaced lying?

actually, its very truthful if you read it the same way as when a company says "we have people working on it"; In that instance you assume it to be "people we have paid".. you just incorrectly assumed that in the former they meant "people are queuing of their own volition"

I have no idea what the market is like in Poland, cold, have to wear gloves, makes touch screen fiddly maybe?

I still won't buy one, the while-cladding already seems dated to me, doubt they'll last a concrete-impact, over-priced, my luck I'd get a lemony limited connection one, I like being able to install my own apps, I could go on.

There, people see a queue and automatically join it. If all those people are willing to wait in line, there obviously has to be something good at the end of it.

I hope that Era also gets in on the act, so to speak. In fact, speaking of acting, I wonder do the actors get a script or do they just ad-lib? Do mimes get a look-in? Also, @Sampler, I suppose the actors could be told to discreetly allow genuine customers behind them in the queue to pass them if they're tsk'ing (or however you spell it in Polish). Is there a Polish Moonwalkers' Guild?

Bizarre... it feels slightly sickening to see some form of apology in a good old fashioned Apple Flame-War... very unsettling.

I like the iPhone interface and shape - not really a fan of the system spec's now. I was hoping to upgrade to the 3g nearer christmas, but it would be a downgrade for the majority of features on my current phone (N95). I can live with my phone being fairly crappy to look at - I couldn't live without the features though. I'm not sure I would take full advantage of some of the iPhone features my current phone lacks either, such as iTunes integration.

Some of the features I want in the iPhone before I upgrade: 5mp camera, proper GPS, decent 3g (although that's meant to be fixed now), fully-implemented bluetooth stack (I stream/control music via bluetooth stereo in my car), homebrew app's without the need for people to sign up to Apple Apps (although self-signing compiled symbian app's isn't exactly easy), and possibly java (although I only use one java app on symbian anyway, so not THAT important.

Some features I want from my current phone that the iPhone has: Nice user interface (Symbian is functional, that's all really), better shape, iTunes integration.

Both phones suffer battery life problems - although the N95 life has improved loads with the later firmware upgrades - perhaps apple could do the same.

The N96 is barely an upgrade from the N96, it improves almost nothing but the shape of the phone, probably bug ridden for the first 6 months too until they hit a stable firmware... so looks like I'm holding on for another year changing my phone. :(

Anybody has any suggestions for a phone that fits my requirements please do suggest, I'm sort of losing hope! lol

is an interesting study. no network subsidies means that the phone actually sells at what apple ask for it. so it's 720$ for the 8gb model and 840$ for the 16gb model. i don't have the numbers but i'd say it's pretty much flopped in india.

i don't hate the iphone, but i do find it kind of funny in this day and age to go orgasmic over a device that is so restrictive. i think the bluetooth in the ip3g is a joke. how does one exchange contacts? unless you just learn to accept and live without it.

personally i want a phone that lets me do more. that not engineered to restrict me. that let's me decide on what i want to install and uninstall on it. but i do think that if someone is happy with their iphone then good for em. i once came across a software that totally stripped away a users rights on windoze 98. it even disabled right-clicking on the desktop. it worked like a charm for users who are not technically savvy enough to *not* do something stupid, i guess similar reasons might actually be an advantage with the ip3g

Oh, well played sir!

(FX: ripple of applause - the sort heard at a county cricket ground on a warm, summer's afternoon as a well-struck six sails effortlessly over the pavilion).

fnarr fnarr, you fruity lot

> this is quite a sizable portion

> your bashing of the iPhone to me is a symptom of a jerk

> iPhone-envy

> now I see why you're so touchy

> 'prime the pump'

> Faking it!

> tidy appearance and a pretty user interface

> kiss and make up

> felchposts exuded by random soapboxers

> must need some serious missionary

> Cheap shots

> fire them off

> OK, I deserve the chastisement (moderatrix)

> While Mr Mectron is quite entitled to have his own needs and desires

> I know several people with this device (not myself) who find it extremely useful, at a stroke negating Mr Mectron's assertion.

> puerile satisfaction teasing

ok ok, hand me the dirty mac

I'm off to polish the iPhone

iPhoneys ...

I saw those actors at work and let me tell you that they were bloody good at their job. I would never have guessed by looking at it that it wasn't a real queue.

I say we get them over here to replace the overvalued shower of shite at the BBC. Should knock a few quid of the old telly license. And what does it matter if they cannot speak English, some of those Polish chicks are hawt. Besides, half the little scrotes in England cannot speak English.

Apparently there were long queues outside the Apple stores here in the UK when the iPhone went on sale; yet Carphone Warehouse were selling it and opened at the same time, less than a quarter of a mile away had no customers.

Obviously it was Carphone Warehouse, but still; interesting.

So...Did any Poles get interested and join the lines or was it only actors in the line-up on opening day?

Many years ago when I was... lets say a lot younger we used to go out and play like good children and come home. We didn't have watches, we didn't have mobile phones. My dad went to work on the underground where even if you had a phone you would have not been able to call. My parents spoke to each other in the morning and in the evening, it was pleasent and relaxed.

Now why does everyone want to go mad over what phone you have? If you can store a number, dial it, answer it and talk into it and the phone works for 48 hours is that not enough... or am I missing the picture, has the phone become the new penis extension seeing as the car has to be left in the parking garage, but the phone is something you can whip out in the meeting room? And don't start with the MP3 and Agenda items, If you can't remember where you need to be for the next 8 hours, find another job, and MP3's that's just anti-social, try talking to people instead of ignoring them.

I personally don't give a monkeys uncle what phone I have, it must do what I need when I need it. If someone else has a bigger, smaller or louder phone why should I care, and why should you care? Buy what you want, use what you want and let everyone else Apple fan or otherwise buy what they want.

Back to the story: Can anyone fathom why Orange believed staging a queue would increase sales? That is the bottom line, you don't pay for actors to line up without a goal. Re the any publicity is good publicity, I'm not buying that.

Mines the one with: Long live the 80's

...the iPhone queues up to buy you!

After reading the headline, I wonder -- how much, exactly, did the actors pay to stand in line for the iPhone? Are Polish actors really that flush?

That is all

at least they are paying them this time rather than brainwashing them. it's a step forward

ok i've used one now and don't think it's that great yeah it all shiney and flashy and it's menu is pretty cool but when i was playing with one in the store i picked one up on the second page of the menu and couldn't figure out how to go back to the first page i asked my friend who loves them and he couldn't tell me nor could the people selling it and i figured it out in the end and had a play and it was okay like alot of apple products i don't have a problem with the device itself just apple advertising (3g is not really first i've never managed the top speed with two 3g phones and a 3g data card it never haappens)

i have since used it not make a call and can't say there were any problems.

the thing is it's just like my smart phone for work it's to big and has hundreds of features i'd never use other than for work and until it's pin and encrypton system is better, my work won't issue them. i've never really had a walk man let alone an mp3 player so i can't say it's replacing two things i carry round (ok i do have a sony walkman phone but i use that feature only when flying or on the train both rare)

so to some up if you carry a phone and an ipod together all the time then get one it seemed simple to use when i was playing with one and it makes calls. so saves you space in your pocket . i wouldn't get one ofr business yet.

but be warned flash it in peoples faces as a status symbol and get your head kicked in or your phone nicked. plus you;ll be bored of all the features in a week my friends were.

if like me you have you just want a phone to call, text and maybe take photo's get something smaller. especially if you've got a clunky work phone to carry too.

to those who will point out the hardware faults i havn't seen them so i can't comment on them

first line of the article..........

>>Mobile phone carrier Orange Poland admitted today that it hired actors to stand in line for the country's iPhone debut<<

read it once, carefully and you will see that this has NOTHING to do with Apple, or failing sales, (the givaway is Orange and Debut) and further to this point...

>>Apple certainly doesn't seem to have much trouble stirring hearts elsewhere into a froth of consumer zealotry without dipping into the local talent pool<<

Sold my iPod touch and N73 for a 16gb black iPhone (the white ones look cheap and nasty), and couldnt be happier, yes, it has its problems, but so does >just about< all tech esp new stuff, and compare any of the iP3g's bugs, that i have had to deal with, to the incessant issues I had with MY N73 for the entire 18 months of the contract and they pale in comparrison.

And really, anyone who is getting too bent out of shape by underhand advertising/sales tecniques needs to get out more, its been happening for years, and shall continue to do so.

FYI:

http://adage.com/article?article_id=130563