Hacker News Reader

Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

a phenomenon that is nearly unprecedented

Not at all; people camped out/stood in line to buy Windows 95.

Tesla popularity is a pop culture fad/novelty. Not to say the car isn't a great technical achievement, but these kind of responses have been seen before.

View on HN

where was this line? I was around when 95 came out and don't remember that much excitement. Also in this case people are parting with a $1k for years just to save a place in line. Has that happened for any car before? that's what's unprecedented.

Thats pretty standard in the upper-end of car purchasing, Ferrari, new models from BMW or Mercedes. All dealers hold waitlists -- its just likely you've never purchased a model that has one.

Also Windows had huge lines... the iconic photo: http://i.imgur.com/oc2EDhE.jpg?fb

wow. thanks for that. I must have blocked it out of my memory. and the comments on that photo are hilarious

It was fantastic. I was living just south of Redmond at the time. There was news coverage about it. Ballmer and Gates were driving around town in a Ballmer's Porsche blasting "start me up" (the theme for the Win95 launch), congratulating shoppers.

haha! oh I wish there was footage of this.

Ferrari production is single-digit thousands at most, they can't have anything like this sort of demand.

>where was this line?

There are some pictures of the lines here:

http://mashable.com/2015/08/24/windows-95-launch/

People didn't pay $1000 for Windows 95. Or for an iPhone. Putting down $1000 deposit for a $35k product years before you might receive it takes it out of the region of fad/novelty, I would argue.

Have you worked at Apple? MANY people spend $1,000+ when new products arrive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com