I arrived at the Apple Store on Stockton Street in San Francisco around 7 a.m. Saturday, and the line was longer than I expected. Already leading nearly to the end of the block, the line was divided into two--one line for the preorders and one for on-site buyers.
Apple employees handed out free coffee and doughnuts to the patient line-waiters, some of whom had been there since Friday evening. It's urban camping at it's finest, with camp chairs, sleeping bags and makeshift tables set up among a sea of iPhones and MacBooks.
Following a countdown from 30 at around 8:30 a.m., the black curtain dropped and the media in front of the store came face to face with the applause of 50 Apple Store employees.
After purchasing the new iPad, Apple employees helped set up the devices and gave short introductions to the App Store, which already has more than 1,000 new Apps design specifically for the iPad.
Palo Alto Apple Store shoppers line up to get their iPads. The first folks in line camped out overnight in what was an unusually cold, but dry spring day.
Apple's senior vice president of iPhone software, Scott Forstall, makes a guest appearance before the store opens. He snapped some photos of the crowd and chatted with Apple employees before heading inside to watch.
E.R. doctor Kathy Corby shows us one of several pages of the medical apps she has installed on her iPhone. She plans to use her new iPad to access them as well.
Ganesh Kaveripakkam has his shiny new iPad opened up by a Palo Alto Apple Store employee. While users could buy their iPad and keep it wrapped up, Apple was offering to help users boot it up and get going.
The iPad display at the Best Buy in Daly City, Calif., had a lot of onlookers, but the store still had nine in stock as of 11:30 a.m. PDT, including at least one in each capacity.
Here, the Lopez family of South San Francisco checks out the iPad.
"It's nice. The price is good," Gonzalo Lopez said while checking out a car racing game.
Still, he wasn't yet sure if he would buy one. He already has an iPod Touch.
On the other side of the country, interest varied as well. The flagship Apple store on Fifth Avenue had hundreds in line.
By contrast, at 9:55 a.m. EDT Saturday--10 minutes before the store opened--only a handful of people were lined up at the Best Buy store near Columbus Circle in New York City.
Jason Haber, 33, first in line at this store, lives only a few blocks from the Best Buy on West 62nd Street and Broadway. He said he came to the Best Buy store at 8 a.m. to find no line.
Inside the Best Buy store near Columbus Circle in New York City Saturday morning, customers played with the new iPad in the Mac section of the store.
Some shoppers said they were just looking and would wait for the second-generation devices to be released. The store manager said the store had plenty of iPads in stock. She doesn't expect the store to run out of the first shipment until at least the end of the day. She also said she expects the store to remain well stocked throughout the coming weeks, which means anyone wanting an iPad won't walk away empty-handed.
