A friend and I arrived at around 8:00 PM on Thursday to be in line at the Apple Store in our local mall. We were Number 50 and 51 respectively. Just ahead of us were some young guys who were clearly interested in getting the iPhone for themselves and we had fun geeking out and chatting about our Apple products. Beyond them, a mixture of people of various ages, and also a mixture of nationalities, although, yes, there were a lot of Asians. One group of three or four men, though, who were not Asian but perhaps South American, really caught our attention because, well....they just didn't seem all that excited or interested in why they were there and in the product. Our line was cut off after two or three more people joined us, and then another line was formed in an adjacent hallway. Others who came later spent the night outdoors.
One of our line mates went for a stroll, did some chatting-up of various people in his travels and returned to tell us that our suspicions were confirmed -- there were indeed a number of "line-sitters" there, people who were being paid to be in line and who would go into the store and buy two iPhones and promptly turn them over to another party. Heh.... Time passed. Then a youngish (mid-20's) Asian guy came wandering by and started chatting us up. He was actually recruiting for more people to buy phones for him. It was his crew who were in line ahead of us, too. He suggested that we buy phones for him and he would pay us in cash, and then we could always return the next day to get the phone we'd originally been interested in getting in the first place. Yeah, right. None of us hearing his spiel bit on that, of course. He was quite honest about his intentions. He was collecting iPhones to ship to Vietnam.
Most of his line-sitters were to buy two iPhone 6 models, 16 GB capacity. (Since my friend and I were both interested in the iPhone 6 Plus 128 GB, we were relieved to hear this news.) When he saw that he wasn't getting too far with recruiting us, the guy moved on......
When we got closer to the time of the store opening and the line actually being ready to move, that was when Security had to keep a close eye out for people (a couple of young men in particular) who were trying to cut in. Between the efforts of Mall Security and Apple personnel, though, things were kept under control and no one was allowed to jump in at the natural break between our line and the next section.
In this area there is a large Asian population and while many people who were in line were indeed Asian, my guess is that the majority of them (lots of young folks) were there for their own iPhone, not to buy two unlocked phones for some scalper.
That said, it was definitely an interesting experience and noticeably different from previous iPhone (or iPad) launches. While there were a lot of enthusiastic Apple fans eager to get their hands on the new iPhones, yes, it was disconcerting to see others in line who really couldn't care less.
