Who knew dinner and a movie would end at the same time — coincidentally — when the Soho Apple store’s iPhone queue had finally dissipated and allowed us to literally walk right in. NO QUEUE, NO FUSS. Took the staircase to 2nd floor. VOILA!
Introducing the iPhone….
As it stands on its dock prepping for its very first sync, fully powered. 29Jun07
Finally a good look at the thing, outta’ the bag. So we are addicted blackberry users obsessed with email, but that doesn’t mean we can’t “share” equipment and try new things, right?
View of 2nd floor – exclusively for iPhone – at the Prince Street location about 21:15 on the eve of the much-hyped release. We were walking back to the car and noticed that the wrap-around-queues from Houston Street just hours ago (prior to dinner and a movie) were “not worth waiting for,” but low and behold, there was NO QUEUE whatsoever, so we took the chance and walked through the store without a barricade, no police escort, no cheering and clapping — as had been previously just hours ago — while walking to the Angelika.
Here’s Steven being “advised” on the how-to’s of activation while at the cashier counter, Soho Apple. 29June07
“So, you mean no one really had to ‘wait in a queue?” Cashier responds, “No. Not at all. We had people here waiting for days.” What a relief. “So, the police escorts, barricades and heaping, heaping mounds of trash were not even necessary?” In surprised confidence she says, “Yeah!”
There’s a shot of the wrap-around-queue, corner of Prince/Greene Street as of 18:20 Friday, 29Jun07. Herds of people just stood in the middle of the street, gawking at the folks on queue.
iPhone display at the Soho Apple on the eve of its release, Fri, 29Jun07.
Looking north on Greene, we literally parked the car and found heaping mounds of trash on the corner (souvenirs from the crazy folks who spent the night on the sidewalk) with police directing foot and vehicular traffic to keep the chaos under control.
There’s a shot of Steven as we walk toward Prince en route to dinner. After a very routine after-work walk toward the bank of restaurants on Mercer Street, we saw an unusual gaggle of people – gobs and gobs – just walking in the middle of the street, taking photos of the iPhone chaos while the long, long queues waiting outside the Apple store finally made their way into the shop when the store opened just 20 minutes earlier.
Other pedestrians like us taking photos of the iPhone extravaganza outside the Soho Apple store. 29Jun07
So funny that we literally walked away from the iPhone craze, and wound up back here just 3 1/2 hours later to find the store and street had zero queues and fuss. We didn’t get the celebratory cheers and clapping, but we got it.
iPhone Review
Will this thing live up to all the hoopla and great expectations? Will an email obsessed blackberry user “trade up/down” to the iPhone? We shall see.