“Seven years ago, Jeremy Bachrach, then a 17-year-old high school student, waited in line outside a mall in Thousand Oaks, Calif., with his 12-year-old brother Harry. They’d been there for more than 24 hours to get their hands on Apple’s original iPhone,” Ben Fox Rubin reports for CNET. “‘I was pretty stoked,’ recalled Bachrach, now a real-estate investment analyst. ‘At the time it met nearly all my expectations.'”
“It was the start of what’s become an annual tradition: Fanboys lining up for hours — or sometimes days — at their local Apple store to be one of the first to walk away with the latest iPhone,” Rubin reports. “That waiting-in-line-to-buy-a-new-Apple-gadget phenomenon, a spectacle few other companies can boast of, underscores the appeal and importance of the iPhone. There will undoubtedly be lines when Apple unveils the iPhone 6, the eighth generation in the franchise, sometime in the fall.”
“In a field where the term ‘game-changer’ is trite, few dispute that it can rightfully be applied to Apple’s marquee product, which has been hailed as the one, the true ‘Jesus phone’,” Rubin reports. “In the past seven years, Apple has sold more than half a billion iPhones… ‘As far as disruptions go, this is as big as it gets and as fast as it gets,’ said Horace Dediu, founder of tech-market analyst firm Asymco. ‘The PC did disrupt a lot of industries, but it took 20, 30 years. The iPhone did it in less than 5.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 7-time Day One iPhone owners here and, with any luck, 8-time Day Oners within a few months! We scored our original iPhones at Apple Store Crossgates in Albany, New York back on June 29, 2007. We still have our very first iPhones, too!
Where were you when Apple’s revolutionary iPhone launched?
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Apple Stores close, black out windows, employees scramble to prep for iPhone launch (with photos) – June 29, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs: Don’t go to an Apple store on iPhone launch day, it’ll be a madhouse – June 1, 2007
At my home office watching the MacWorld SJ Keynote online.
I took one look at the face of the new iPhone and it took only 1 second to know the world had just changed upside down.
No more unneeded keys, no flip faces, no more 169 page manuals for a device that was smaller than the manual, no need to keep a laptop with me to see an email or send one or see a portion of a web page.
Freedom!
Only one other personal computing device affected me in the same way as the iPhone.
Most people here on MDN were not around when the product launched. People that were there were just as astonished as with the iPhone.
The HP 35 and then quickly the programmable HP 45 handheld calculators were absolutely essential for engineering work in the 1970s. Back then HP had vision and capability and a truly capable product design group.
The only alternative to the $500 HP 35 was a “minicomputer” or time-sharing on a teletype machine that was programmed to do solutions in Basic or Fortran and fed into the phone line (for me) by rolls of paper tape.
Next: Star Trek’s tricorder is about to hit the world stage from Apple (as a worn device) and I have faith that it is finally going to help people revolutionize their health and fitness plans.
Yet I still see post from haters touting Apple is a pure marketing company. That is why the iPhone is a success. Pure Marketing. Pure STUPID thinking is more like it from those posters. lol
I loved those HP calculators and would have bought one if not for that STUPID RPN!
Still use a RPN calculator the HP15c
so some of us love RPN 🙂
I can only attribute that to an inoperable brain defect.
Someone should start a fund.
😉
Indeed, this is one gadget that changed the World!
Standing in line at Apple Store La Cantera in San Antonio waiting to buy our first iPhone. Everyone was very excited.
La Fogata, Blanco Cafe and Taco Cabana … sigh.
I was eating lunch at Jason’s Deli, and the launch was being covered on the TV. We were all blown away, and it was instantly obvious that the iPhone was going to be huge.
AT&T Store, Athens, Georgia. My son and I waited over night, and bought two: one for me to keep, one to sell. We figured the price would go up, which unfortunately it didn’t, but at least we made our money back on it!
Just the other day I charged up the old iPhone 1, and powered it on. Worked perfectly of course. I can remember sitting on an airplane with it and people stopping to stare while they were boarding. One actually said, Look, he has the Jesus phone.” Now I marvel at the numbers of iPhones and iPads I currently see on planes.
I remember that experience. Men, Women (specially the hot ones that normally ignore everyone) would all stop to marvel and ask you questions about it. Of course I let them touch and play with it, specially the gorgeous women who loved playing and touching it…the iPhone you dirty mind. 😜
I remember Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report saying “There hasn’t been this much collective nerd wood since Princess Leia wore a copper bikini in Return of the Jedi!”
Still true now…until iWatch comes out!
I was shooting on the animated film CORALINE then up in Hillsboro, Oregon and there were only a couple of us who had them initially, including one of the animators who hung it around her neck. OMG we loved them, a revelation. Worth every penny then as now and it was a pretty penny then.
Remembering…”this is going to send Apple’s share price through the roof!”
Walked across the street from my lab to Cambridgeside Galleria around 3 PM and got into a short line at the Apple store. Had my new phone about 20 min later.
Buying two at Apple’s first store in sunny California.
uh, Apple’s first store was in Tyson’s Corner, VA… it opened 3 hours before the San Francisco store… I know because I was there waiting in line on store opening day. The VERY FIRST Apple Store line-up occurred there. I think I have some pictures from that even, I am going to have to go back and look.
One of my friends worked for AT&T at the time. Just before the iPhone came out AT&T released a memo to their employees saying, in so many words, they were going to shutdown their cell services division. Steve must have performed magic tricks to get AT&T to change their direction and give cellular service one last chance.
At work?
I was working at the Apple Store at Willow Bend in Plano, TX. I expected a huge turnout after watching hundreds of people lining up since early morning that day, but I wasn’t prepared to see the store literally packed from side to side, and end to end. It was like that from the time we started selling iPhones at 6pm that evening until about midnight. I didn’t get home until past 1am. The launch was a lot of fun. I still wear my “Say hello to iPhone” t-shirt that all of us were given for the launch. During my time at Apple, I worked the iPod 3rd gen launch, Panther launch, and Tiger launch in edition to several black Fridays. I thought I was prepared for the iPhone launch event, but I was totally blown away by the amount of pent of demand, and I was surprised that most customers were buying the high end model. And not just one… but two!
Many people forget that for years prior to the iPhone’s release, people were carrying iPods and cellphones and wishing Apple would combine the two. They were even calling it the iPhone. To say there was pent up demand is an understatement!
The funny thing is that my best friend (also and Apple employee) and I used to debate about whether Apple should release an iPhone. I was initially against it, but once I saw the announcement at MacWorld 2007, I was all for it. I was a Mac Genius at the time, and I hated having to support iPods. I was worried about having to fix iPhones all the time. It turns out that there really weren’t that many problems, and most of the initial issues we saw were very simple, how-to type of issues.
Sitting in line for 8 hours.
Went at dinner time. Stood in line 20 minutes. (Never stood in line before for anything like that). Bought the phone- changed my life. I ultimately became an iPad artist (first day too) and my stock went through the roof. I kept my original iPhone and it still works. I will get the new one on day one too. It may not give me a new profession and comfortable retirement, but it will make my life better in unexpected ways. (btw I am a 72 year old woman “fan boy”.
Fanboys?
As a newspaper photojournalist I have covered this many times and I have seen (and photographed) many women as well.
http://www.stevengeorges.com/DailyPilot/Apple-Store-Crystal-Court
At the time I was able to telecommute for work. I waited inline and was the first dozen or so to get it on day one. The iPhone changes everything. Only an IDIOTIC Apple Hating loser will believe it didn’t changed the world. I swear to God those guys are complete morons. lol. 😝 loving all the goodness Apple has done!
Oh yeah that was a Sunday. We were all off that day. lol
I camped out overnight at the Palo Alto Store. It was a great party with many early Apple employees there. Steve Jobs showed up as did his wife. It was a lot of fun. I’ve camped overnight there for launch day iPhones and iPads.
As soon as I got my iPhone I headed out of the country, and it was fun walking around with it where nobody else could get one.
Trying to find Samsung’s “The Next Big Thing Is Already Here” phone but ran out of gas after going all over town looking for it and had to hoof it home!
Actually, I was at home watching the brilliant Steve Jobs introduce the iPhone in January and when it launched In June was envious of the people in line to get their hands on one!!!
THIS never gets old!…
I remember waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning still impacted by what I had seen on the Keynote, and just could not believe it. It was like a kid at Christmas I couldn’t wait to see it again I got up at 3 o’clock in the morning and watched it again and was just absolutely fascinated it was a moment of my life that I’ll never forget it still crystal-clear.
Was on my one-man developer booth area on Apple’s giant booth at MacWorld San Francisco 2007 while Steve presented the keynote. Afterwards there was one iPhone rotating in a display case. Steve came over with a ton of PR, press and others after the keynote. Good times 😉
Regretting AT&T had really bad service in my area!
I waited in line in Pasadena, CA, first at an AT&T store, which had a shorter line than the Apple store just a couple blocks away. Lots of fun in line. But AT&T ran out of phones, so we went to the Apple store, where they seemed to have plenty and the line moved fast. Took the phone home and knew it was going to be great, but AT&T took a couple days to sort out problems and make the device useable. I’ve updated regularly since then, but I look back on that as the beginning of a wonderful “iPhone summer.”
Best wishes to all.
I was working at Apple at the time (Engineering) and was given my first iPhone as an employee benefit. 8^)