NYT: Gave Up Sleep and Maybe a First-Born, but at Least I Have an iPhone
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. the rest