After work on Friday, I met up with roomie Chris, as he works on top of (in the GM building) the flagship 5th ave Apple Store. I wanted to get my 3rd gen iPod fixed but apparently there was some hooplah about a “phone, widescreen video ipod, and internet communicator” combo device that was being released. I wasn’t sure what was going on but it was fun to watch the controlled madness–lots of media, lots of cheering Apple employees, a line wrapping around a whole city block.

I got there right after 6pm, the drop time, and consequently missed the initial burst of excitement. As I said, there was a line wrapping around the block, that was separated from normal traffic by police-type barricades. There were plenty of Apple employee handlers and security watching over and guiding the line to prevent any misfortunate cuttages.

Around 7pm, the line had slackened. Perhaps the line ushers weren’t doing a good job of moving the line foward. There were breaks in the line to allow for entrance into the center courtyard, and the ushers would have to shuffle people between such breaks. Perhaps it was in one of those shuffling periods, but with nobody in sight behind, that Chris and I made a dashing move to get in line. We effectively waited less than 10 minutes in line. It was our original intention to perhaps see a live specimen of the phone in its birth environment and maybe even touch it; however, the plan completely backfired when, while waiting in the relatively short line, either Chris or I decided it would be a good idea to just buy one.

Our eager, child-like banter shifted from “I wanna touch it” to “various was to get out of our current contracts and sell our current phones.” Well, we succumbed. My credit card company is happy. Apple is happy. The phone is so slick that it makes me happy.

30 minutes later, after soaking in the frenzy of the subterranean store, we emerged back to street level to the cheers of Apple employees, iPhones in hand…