Over the past couple of weeks, we've been receiving reports that Apple has been laying off a number of recently-hired staff members at its retail stores. Most of the reports have been coming from Apple retail employees in the United Kingdom, but several of these reports claim that similar actions are taking place at stores around the world. We've also been receiving reports of long-term cutbacks in hours for part-time staff in the United States and Canada.

That assumes that you already have an iDevice and the app.

So what happens when they release the iPhone 5 and there's a queue leading out of their stores? Won't they need the extra sales staff (at least for a short while) then?

So they only want guilable customers who'll queue......... Oh wait, of course they do.

My point being it's better to treat your customers well at product launch, rather than making them queue for your own PR purposes.

My point being it's better to treat your customers well at product launch, rather than making them queue for your own PR purposes.

I totally get queueing for tickets to something, buying a house, a toy for your child, whatever. But an electronic device that is probably little different to it's predecessor, and maybe one you own? For a bit of perspective on that, I wouldn't queue for a video game, for instance.

'Perspective' in this case is merely your personal judgement of value. You're perfectly happy to queue for the things that you see value in, but not for things you don't. Yet the people queueing for those things value them as much as you value the things you have mentioned, or they wouldn't be queuing. There are things I would queue for but a ticket to an event or a new phone are neither of those. You either accept that people queueing for things they value is valid or it isn't, but saying 'these things are worth queueing for but those aren't' applies to nobody but you.