By contrast, Apple in the past few years has seen significantly longer lineups at its own stores and many AT&T locations; some flagship stores, such as the 5th Avenue Manhattan store, have seen lines ranging into the hundreds on iPhone release days.

All this says is that there's a group of people willing to stand in line for a piece of electronics. Apple has more of these fools, er, fans, than most companies. This is shown by the fact most people line up at apple stores, not the local ATT store, for these things.

However, Apple is helped by asking for a similar price in-store as online and through a process that potentially streamlines retail purchases.

First off, Apple asks for the SAME price in-store and online. It is Apple's thing. All prices are the same, doesn't matter where you go.

Secondly, how the h*** does 'similar' pricing aid apple in getting more people in line? Are Verizon's phones cheaper online, so that's why the lines aren't as big? One would think that, with the pricing being the same, people would just shop at home and not deal with the line (well, most sane people).

Third, they can say the process 'streamlines' retail purchases, but not once they changed it that you had to do all the activation at the store (otherwise, even weeks after the iPhone 3G was released, say, you wouldn't still have people lining up outside long after the store opened. They'd be in and out).

No store experience can beat buying it online, except you don't have it 'immediately' (assuming the store has any in stock to begin with). Enter in some information, they ship you the phone, you activate it at home. No standing around in the store giving some minimum wage employee your SSN, or waiting for who knows how long for approval of the process.

Surprised that they managed to generate even this much excitement.

The ads just aren't that effective. The "iDon't" ads don't hit home to the average user. Only a small percentage of people know what "open development" means. Given the success of the App Store, it seems most don't care about open development on a mobile phone. The ability to run multiple apps is also a very techie argument, because most average (non-techie) people I know only want to do one thing at a time with their phone, and place a premium on the *phone* part working well, and good battery life. Everything else is just gravy.

And you'll notice you don't even see the phone in the "iDon't" ads. It really is a rather unimpressive looking smartphone for 2009. Amongst the iPhone, Pre and Droid, Droid is a very distant third. It's very square and bulky-looking, and the keyboard looks like it will be very difficult for anyone without tiny fingers. Newsflash: people are coming around to virtual keyboards, and the "it doesn't have a physical keyboard" argument is so 2007!

in Manhattan looks like then just head over to the new Apple Upper West Side retail store opening next Saturday Nov. 14th. You'll see a damn mob which will start from the night before. They'll be more people in that line than all the lines in all the stores that sold Droids in Manhattan.

You can now.. but I thought there were lots of sell outs on all 3 versions of the iPhone on the release days. I could be mistaken tho.

Looks so nondescript, it could be used for all most any news story.

- A

Whenever the d*mn Jesus phone becomes available on the Verizon network, you bet your a*s I'll be waiting in line (cash in hand) to get mine. BTW, the line usually isn't for any kind of phone, its for customer service. At least that has been my experience at any cellphone store.