I love gadgets. And I’m often first. But it’s really never occurred to me to line up or camp out for new gear. In fact, other than the Wii, I can’t recall any other recent true shortage of product. So I’d rather spend the night in my bed and wait a week for things to settle down. However, I must say that I do enjoy documenting folks with more free time and tolerance for discomfort than I… and I’ve been on hand to photograph the PS3, Wii, and various iPhone launches craziness over the years.
Today, of course, is the launch of the iPad. One hour prior to opening, Apple’s Reston, VA outpost had 9 folks in the pre-order line and less than 30 without hardware reservations. The first to show, a father and son team, arrived at 3:30AM. Which isn’t so bad as far as these things go. Also, Apple staff has kindly provided coffee, water, and cookies to all. Although, they wouldn’t disclose how many iPads they have in stock… other than to say they’d do their best to accommodate everyone in line.
Once these campers have been served, we’ll vacate the climate controlled Starbucks outpost across the way and check out the demo iPad units. Hopefully, I’ll be able to abstain from a purchase today. We shall see.
Click to enlarge:
For some historical perspective, here’s my truly classic suburban video of dozens of people camping 36 hours (with tents, in stormy weather) for the PS3 in 2006.
I see an iPad in Dave’s future. :-)
The wife sitting with you at Starbucks hopes you don’t abstain from a purchase!
As an update, the crowd easily doubled in the last hour before the store opened. And given how slowly Apple is processing customers this AM, we may not even get in the store to take a look before we need to move on to our other errands. $500 saved! ;)
With my history of camping out for things, I couldn’t resist sending the wife and kid in my place, as I’m stuck at work today. They managed to grab the first spot in line, despite showing up at a relatively late hour (7:30) :)
Awww, shucks. Sorry, Melissa!
No need to camp out in my small town. I walked up to the best buy about 5 minutes before it opened; I was fourth or fifth in line. The time in line, the purchase, getting home and the first sync took about 25 minutes out of my morning. One of the advantages of a small town. Big enough for a Best Buy, but small enough to pick up a new device like the iPad and be using it within 30 minutes.
Guess I don’t really understand the point of camping out because I usually try to avoid local sales tax (8.5% in Houston), so I try [pre-]ordering everything online. And nowadays, with different cashback schemes, savings quickly add up.
Futhermore, I’d queued up enough growing up in USSR, so I care not to relive those experiences.
Finally, as a professional who gets paid overtime, there’s no point in standing in line for hours as I could be getting paid at work :)
P.S. Ahh, PS3 launch. Good time. Made a couple of grand reselling a few units I managed to pre-order online. Although, if I could’ve guessed that Wii would be such a hit (looked really lame), that’s what I’d concentrated on :)