Question: What gets Apple fans really excited? Announcing that they can buy the newest iPhone.

Question: What gets Apple fans really livid? Announcing that they can’t buy the newest iPhone.

This was the social experiment that unfolded today in Beijing, where Apple had planned to launch the iPhone 4S to China. But after getting a little stage fright due to the enormity of the eager crowd, Apple pulled the plug on the launch two hours before the release and postponed the release of the iPhone.

Tsk, tsk, Apple. You may giveth the iPhone, but you may certainly not taketh away.

The Daily Mail reports that after the crowd was informed that Apple would not be selling them the iPhone 4S, people took up my personally favorite way of expressing their outrage by throwing eggs at the Apple Store. Check out footage of the outraged would-be Apple customers in the following video provided by Reuters:

The iPhone 4S was apparently still sold in other stores throughout China today where crowds were presumably less intense and less egg-armed.

In a statement released to Reuters yesterday, Apple said that it has halted sales of the iPhone 4S altogether in Beijing and Shanghai “to ensure the safety of our customers and our employees.” Perhaps The following YouTube video allegedly of the “chaos” at the Apple Store although I think it may be satire:

This additional video, though, does show somebody, here described as a security guard, getting smacked around by some members of the crowd:

Mic Gadget is saying that a fight did break out but that it was between scalpers who got pissed about their lack of iPhone 4Ss to hawk. The New York Times is reporting that “an army of scalpers hired migrant workers to snap up products” such as the iPhone so that the scalpers can then flip the product on the black market.

Honestly, we’ll probably never know really how all this trouble jumped off in Beijing, but whoever started the mini-riot redeems one imperishable maxim: a few bad apples spoil the bunch.