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By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: June 30, 2007

Apple wanted a spectacle when the iPhone went on sale, and it got just that.

Dozens of photographers hovered outside Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue near East 59th Street, waiting to snap pictures of the elated, often sunburned faces of the first iPhone owners. Some Apple faithful had waited in line for days.

At 6 p.m., their patience paid off.

“I guess I didn’t need to get in line because they have thousands of them in there,” said Norbert Pauli, 52, who had waited since Wednesday morning outside the Fifth Avenue store. The sweaty tangle of people who lined up there included a customer service representative for a trucking company who took a vacation day to make her first Apple purchase; a jazz musician who declared, “I don’t stand in line for anything”; and a tourist from Argentina who said he was not even sure the phone would work once he got it home.

At Apple stores across the country yesterday, there were the so-called iCultists, the Internet entrepreneurs and technology consultants who would have surprised you if they said they didn’t wait in line all night.

“If Apple made sliced bread, yeah, I’d buy it.” said Andrew Kaputsa, who waited outside the Michigan Avenue Apple store in Chicago. “It’s just good stuff. Everything they touch.”

But then there were the iConverts, the not-so-savvy customers who did not know much about the iPhone other than that they had to have it.

“Have I drank the Kool-Aid?” said Marc Falato, 42, a Broadway producer who got in line at the Fifth Avenue store around 8 a.m. yesterday. “I think maybe to a certain extent. After all, you can order it online tonight and get it delivered in three to five business days. So I guess I bought into the hype.”

Tracy Carroll, a 42-year-old Internet consultant who waited in line just a few steps ahead of Mr. Falato, said, “I’m buying it sight unseen, and that’s kind of rare for me.” Later, as he was walking away from the cash register with two iPhones in hand, he said, “Oh man, it was so worth it.”

The iPhone, which sells for $499 or $599, depending on memory size, is a huge step for Apple. But it is also critical to AT&T’s growth. The telephone company has an exclusive contract with Apple in the United States to sell the phone and provide wireless phone service, and is betting on an influx of new customers. Of course, that would mean that people who already have cellphone service with other carriers must be willing to pay the hefty fees to break their contracts.

Indeed, there were several T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless customers in line yesterday in Manhattan. “That’s not even an issue. I want the phone,” said Cassie Tran, a 25-year-old who does public relations for a high-end fashion designer in New York. Ms. Tran has a contract with Verizon that she said she would “pay whatever” to break.

Some had clearly been following everything about the iPhone for so long, that they spoke as if they were reading from Apple’s talking points. “What Steve Jobs cited in his keynote in January was that everybody was looking for a device that brought it all together,” said Gene Lewis, 34, the owner of a Web site development company.

Mr. Lewis, who got in line outside the Fifth Avenue store around 7 p.m. on Thursday and slept all night in a folding chair, used words like “elegant” and “beautiful” to describe the phone, which at that point he had seen only in pictures.

Josh Topolski, 29, a blogger for the technology blog Engadget.com who waited all day outside the Fifth Avenue store, said Apple’s ability to generate such intense interest was remarkable. “Apple, they’re masters of hype and keeping people waiting. This line is proof of that.”

But the mania surrounding the iPhone’s debut has created somewhat of a backlash among bloggers and comedians, who have reveled in mocking all the hoopla.

“It’s going to do for phones what the iPod did for pods,” Rob Riggle, the “senior technology correspondent” of “The Daily Show,” said in a sketch on Thursday night. Mr. Riggle then asked to see the hands of an unwitting blogger who tested the iPhone and he then sniffed them. “Man, it’s still warm,” he cooed.

Gizmodo.com wrote under the headline “Nerd Party,” “Do you wish you were hanging out in line at the 5th Ave Apple Store, but are stuck with a pesky job that won’t let you bum around with a bunch of nerds on a weekday?”

So exactly what type of people can take all day, and in some cases several days, to wait in line for a cellphone? Well, the mayor of Philadelphia, for starters. John F. Street waited much of the day yesterday to buy an iPhone. A spokesman explained that Mr. Street was conducting city business by cellphone and BlackBerry while he waited.

Then there are the people who were being paid to wait in line for others. Dan Zabar, a 23-year-old production assistant for a company that produces television commercials in New York, was making about $150 to wait all day in line for his boss. Others got in line early to try to sell their spots. Along 58th Street, where the line for the Fifth Avenue store had spilled over, one young man was offering his place for $160 in the early afternoon. By late afternoon, he had raised the price to $180.

There were also the so-called early adoptors, the technophiles who habitually rush out to buy first-generation electronics. “I’m everyone’s guinea pig,” said Christopher Kokinos, a former Apple employee who now works for a marketing communications firm in New York. He spent a total of six hours in line outside the Fifth Avenue store yesterday. “All my friends say, I’ll wait until you buy it so I know if it’s any good.”

But not everyone was so enthusiastic.

Near the Chicago store on Michigan Avenue, Sara Bafundo, a guest services agent at the Wyndham Hotel across the street from the Apple store, looked at the long line and said, “I just don’t get it. I just don’t get it. The hype just doesn’t make sense.”

Eric Taub contributed reporting from Los Angeles and Eric Ferkenhoff from Chicago.

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