Thursday, October 8, 2015

iPhone 6s Reservations: Better than Silicon Valley Traffic

It's hard to get out on the road in Silicon Valley these days without getting a bit road ragey. First there's the traffic. Add to that the frustration multipliers when you have people pull unbelievably dangerous traffic moves. Some classics are the "I'm in the far right lane on the right and my GPS (Waze seems to like doing this) says I need to turn left here, so I'm going to just make my way across four lanes to get into the turn lane" move. These people move as though there is nobody else in their world. Anyway, as I rant, I can feel the blood pressure rise. The joys of Silicon Valley.

But before you get out in traffic, what you really need is something to kick the blood pressure up, get you amped before you have to sit in your car and celebrate the traffic stress. My new favorite game is trying to reserve an iPhone at the Apple Store. It's become like a frustrating boss sequence, but with no resolution, no victory over the boss. Instead, I get nothing... except for my traffic frustration warm-up.

And as I click through the process, the million stupid clicks to try and reserve a model of the iPhone that I already know Apple won't have, I'm reminded of what a stupid process it is. Click. Click. Click. Through the entire sequence. Oops, you tried to click through to quickly and it defaulted to "see if your eligible for an upgrade from AT&T and what your payment terms may be". Back. Back. Now, you finally reach the store game -- the real boss fight.

You select your first store and you already know that they won't have inventory. It's one of those wasted attacks, something just to engage the boss. Then you start going through all of the stores in your area. The click. Location. Model. Carrier. Poop. Again. Then, just for fun, you start looking around the state, clicking on stores that you know you'd never drive to. Bakersfield. Carlsbad. Hey, they have a rose gold 16GB model Carlsbad.

Now you're ready for traffic.

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