People Come Out in Droves to Line-up for iPhone on Apple's 'iDay';
Too Early to Tell How History will View/Record June 29th, 2007
| by Joe Leo, Columnist |
'SAY HELLO TO iPHONE': A customer in the background literally takes Apple's tagline to heart and calls himself on the iPhone. (Which looks kind of funny, but hey, we did it too, so...?). [PHOTO: ©2007, J. Leo]
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After the visit to the AT&T Store, we went back to the Apple Store (we're still in San Francisco by the way, in case you lost track of cities) and it was now about 9:00p. Once again, the utter amazement by new people walking in. "It's not sold out?"
"It's not sold out," says an Apple Store employee, to people's dropping jaws.
Upstairs, another demo presentation is underway at their little theater, and the Apple Store employee there is now talking about the next big feature of the iPhone. "It's the best iPod that Apple has ever come up with."
He goes on to say a bit later, "This is the real internet... Safari, the same on the Macs and now on Windows." And then how the iPhone works by syncing with iTunes and you're all set.
Oh yes. Apple's "trojan horse." (Go here for the Safari + iTunes angle if you're puzzled).
Back to Jiggs Davis at the Apple Store in Emeryville, he seems to corroborate something we talked about in a commentary piece last week. A Mac user himself since the late 80s / early 90s, Davis says, "I can't help but think everyone of these have been a positive thing (iPod, iTunes) to convert PC users to Mac."
So is Apple trying to sell a cell phone or an iPod? We'll leave that to your imagination for now and talk about it in a future story. But one piece of evidence seems to point to the cell phone aspect.
Contreras and Perez from the Cingular Wireless store line in Emeryville, were asked why they wanted a 4GB model when they could have twice the capacity for a hundred dollars more. Contreras said since she already has an iPod, she doesn't need the extra space.
On the other hand, on Friday night, the 8GB model was selling faster than the 4GB one. According to an S.F. Apple Store employee behind the main registers downstairs, 9 out of 10 iPhones he sold were the 8GB ones.
At the Emeryville Apple Store later that evening--after we were finished in S.F.--every single 8GB model they had in stock had sold out. The only ones that were available were the 4GB ones. And this was at 11:35p at night, 25 minutes before closing time.
All those people who lined up for hours earlier that day, or even days before like at the Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York, apparently wasted their time. Then again, for all we knew, like the Xbox, the Wii, or Playstation 3 months earlier, the same scenario could have surfaced with the iPhone. And those people who lined up would have it and "Wii" wouldn't. (Sorry).
Seems Apple didn't want to do that to its die-hard fans and their new & future customer base.
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