Live From the iPhone Line
You may think throngs of people camping out on the street for hours on end would cause confusion and mayhem. But that’s not the case at the Apple store in Palo Alto, Calif., where the approximately 50 eager customers already gathered around the downtown shop have even devised their own numbering system to make sure everyone keeps their fair place in line.
It’s now less than 24 hours before the iPhone goes on sale across 164 Apple stores and 1800 AT&T stores nationwide. In Palo Alto – home of Steve Jobs himself – it’s 7pm, and soon-to-be iPhone owners are more-or-less neatly lined up around the block, typing away on their (Apple) laptops, sharing pizzas and waiting to get their hands on the much lusted-after handset.
At the head of the queue is 13-year-old Patrick Scoble, son of blogger Robert Scoble.
“I got here at 9:30am,” he says proudly. Luckily, school just got out for summer (no coincidence there, of course).
Others, like Shane Combest, arrived a little later in the day, around 12:30pm. A 22-year old Stanford graduate about to start his own record label, Combest says he plans to buy two iPhones (the maximum number allowed per customer) come 6pm Friday evening. Until then, he’s relying on the complimentary pizza to keep him going. As for bathroom usage, he says he’ll go to the Border’s across the street until they close.
“And I’ll try not to drink too much afterwards,” he adds, taking a bite of his pizza.
Stay tuned for more from the iPhone line….