My day began at 6:30 a.m. Friday at the AT&T retail store on the southside of Memorial Road across from Quail Springs Mall. About 30 people were sitting in camp chairs and in cars parked outside the store that wouldn’t open until 8 a.m. They were waiting for their opportunity to buy the new 3G iPhone that promises faster Internet and GPS wayfinding technology, among other features.
Then it was across Memorial Road to the another AT&T store where more than 40 people already were gathered. Finally, we made it down to Penn Square Mall shortly after 7 a.m. to check out the lines at the Apple retail store and at the AT&T store in the mall. About 225 people were waiting in line at the Apple store when it opened at 8 a.m., and another 75 people down at the AT&T store.
I shot a few pix along the way. The top picture is of Brooke Phelps of Oklahoma City, who was first in line at the mall AT&T store, but had to wait almost an hour and a half to leave with her prize because of glitches trying to activate the phone. Meanwhile, a dozen or more other buyers were quickly serviced and walked out with their phones.
The photos below are shots taken at the Memorial Road stores and of Apple employees handing out water to those waiting in the mall line about 9:30 a.m.
Jim StaffordBusiness News Reporter
August 8th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I can’t believe so many people turned out on the launch of the iPhone. They caused outages on the Apple servers, bought all the iPhones, and now they are selling for upwards of $1000 on ebay!