The Long Night
The iPhone 4 was announced on June 10 & released in Canada on July 30, 2010. This photo above captures a fraction of the crowd that had camped out overnight to be some of the first to get their hands on Apple’s latest device.
The iPhone 4 was announced on June 10 and became available for pre-order on June 15 in the US, France, Germany, Japan and the UK ahead of it's June 24 release in these markets. Other countries, including Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy & 13 more, needed to wait until July 30, 2010, before the iPhone became available for them.
I can't explain to you how I settled on this, but on July 29, I impulsively made the decision that I not only wanted the iPhone 4 at launch but that I wanted to participate the full iPhone launch experience. At the time, lining up for Apple products was a bit of a thing & carried a lot of cachet (though not healthy cachet mind you). Nearing launches, it wasn't uncommon to hear about people camping out a week ahead of launch to be one of the first few with Apple's latest iThingy.
July 29
21:00
Around this time, I was entertaining the idea of travelling to my local Apple store. For the next 45-minutes, my sensibilities against heading out and spending the entire night outside on a cold July evening waiting for a phone continued to win out.
21:45
My sensibilities continued to chip away. What started out as "no reasonable person would wait outside overnight for a phone" had by this point been bargained down from a position not of if but when, as in "what if I woke up at 5:00 am and headed before the stop opened up?”
22:00
Sensibility had been abandoned, and I finally hit the "go big or stay home" point to my decision making. I was young and didn't work the next day, so why not head out and see what all this hype about?
22:15
My next step was figuring out what you bring to an impromptu 8-hour overnight iPhone launch? Apparently just an iPhone 3G (for entertainment), a folding chair (might as well be comfortable), a few snacks, and some layers to stay warm (it was a cold night for July).
22:30
Supplies packed, I headed down to the Apple Store.
22:50
By the time I arrived at my local Apple store, a crowd of 30-40 people had already lined up ahead of me, & rumours flowed down crowd that the first people had shown up at around noon to secure their place as first in line. Somehow an old couch had been brought by a group among the first 10 lined up. I set up my spot and got ready for the night ahead.
July 30
00:00
Any romanticized illusions I had about about this experience had completely disappeared by this point. Sure you spend the first bit of the night chatting with people nearby while the adrenaline of it all makes the initial moments exciting, but then the reality of the situation sets in - you’re just a person waiting in line for a phone getting progressively colder and more fatigued.
02:00
I didn’t know about/wasn’t into podcasts, so I passed time cycling between the few songs, TV episodes, and games I had preloaded onto my phone. There wasn’t the same level of ubiquitous WiFi that exists now available to me, and with only 250mb (not a typo) of monthly data, browsing the web was out of the question.
03:00
A flurry of police cars sounded off in the distance and a police helicopter began to circle an area near the mall where a crowd of over 100 people had gathered by this point in time. The commotion gave some of us something to talk about for a few minutes before the adrenaline disappeared and you were again reminded of how tired you were becoming.
03:15
Time goes by very slowly when you are cold, tired, bored, and questioning why on earth you committed to this nonsense in the first place.
03:16
Seriously, very slowly!
05:30
90-Minutes until the Apple Store opened. We continued to be stationed outside waiting to be let into the mall. A crowd of over 200 people had formed behind me by this point.
05:45
The mall doors opened, and what had been a civil and orderly queue gave way to lawlessness as it became a a free-for-all from the mall doors down a hallway to where the Apple store was located. Once I reached the store, a roped off section had been constructed near the Apple Store to corral a new line ahead of the iPhone 4s launch at 07:00 am.
06:00
It probably took 15 minutes for the crowd of hundreds to move from outside the mall into the new queue. A second, warmer, more crowded period of waiting began.
06:30
Apple few retail employees began going down the line, chatting us up and hanging out cards that noted our place in the queue along with noted what model of iPhone & carrier we were planning of purchasing.
06:58
A few minutes before the store was to open, Apple employees came pouring out and began circling the crowd clapping, cheering, and riling us all up. As cooky as this looks now, however ridiculous I felt for having waited the night was replaced by a feeling that I was a small part of an iconic launch.
06:59
10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
07:00
The Apple logo lights up, and doors slide open, the iPhone 4 had arrived!
Post-Mortem
The night I camped out for the iPhone 4 was my first and last time I camped out for anything Apple-related. In the years following the iPhone 4’s launch, these experiences began to fall out of favour, replaced with midnight preorders and more orderly reservation systems. When I look back a decade later, 2010 was an exciting time to be an Apple fan and these launches - whether store openings or new products - had this incredible groundswell of excitement! Apple has always had a knack for this sort of fervour amongst its fans, and I’m glad to have gotten a small taste of it the night I decided to camp out the iPhone 4.
