[mikeash]

Demand for gold is high everywhere. I've yet to see any evidence whatsoever that demand or preference for gold is higher in Asia than in the rest of the world. Yet everybody runs with it because "Asians like gold!" as if that's somehow different than anyone else.

[the_watcher]

"In Australia and China, online Apple Store shipping times for the iPhone 5s rapidly slipped to 7–10 days for all colors and capacities, with immediate unavailability of the 64GB gold version."

Speed of unavailable being reached seems like the best metric available right now, and that suggests more demand in Asia than other places (although it's early and hard to draw conclusions - so I guess I would agree with your point that Business Insider jumped to conclusions a bit, really just seems like Apple wildly underestimated demand for the whole 5S series).

[aeturnum]

Unless I misread the article, it seemed to claim that gold iphones sold much more quickly in asia than other markets. Observing that fact and say, "that region probably likes gold more than other regions," is not racist. If you were to get off a plane in hong kong and say to the first person you see, "Hey, everyone here loves gold right, do you wanna buy a gold iphone?" That would be racist.

Populations do things, and it's ok to say that they do things. It's not ok to assume individual members of that population do those same things based on their ethnicity.

[mikeash]

Where, exactly, does it say that gold sold out more quickly in Asia?

All I see is that it said gold sold out quickly in Asia. Which of course it did, just like in the rest of the world.

[the_watcher]

Here is a good roundup of evidence that gold is more popular in Asia (BI did a poor job of providing non-anecdotal evidence): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6431520

[mikeash]

Did you notice that I already replied to that comment?