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Went to the Apple Store at my mall last year around 8pm- was 3rd in line. By 6am, the line was outside of the mall. By 7am (when they started handing out cards for walk-ins), they started turning people away since options started disappearing quickly (16GB goes first usually).

My mall lets us stay inside overnight. It's going to vary by location.
 
This might be a jerky thing, but it's a serious question.

Would I be more likely to walk into an AT&T store in a lower income neighborhood and purchase an iPhone 5S on release day than in a higher income neighborhood?

I swear i'm serious.
 
That's funny, I'm in Brevard Florida and I walked right into the ATT store on launch day and got my wife a black 64gb iphone 5. No waiting. So either you are full of it or you are full of it.

Either you're a troll or you're a troll...

I imagine in your tiny world it's hard to imaging anyone having a different experience or opinion than you but it was sold out for weeks here as well.
 
Walked in at noon on iPhone 5 launch and didn't have to wait. 16gb ATT Black. Sprint and Verizon people had to wait for some reason.
 
And this is exactly what they want. They want news coverage of massive lines of people waiting for the latest Apple product. With preorders the past few years (as well as a much more competitive smartphone market), lines have not been what they once were.


Its because they want to push the 5c. There are no pre orders for the 5s, the only way to get one is go to an apple store or carrier store. However, you can easily pre order the 5c. Also, go to every major carriers website and youll notice that the 5c is prominently displayed on the front page of every website. The 5s is not mentioned anywhere! Apple trying to market and sell the 5c more as it give them a larger profit margin.

My question is the 5s resale value...will it retain its value like previous iphones or will it lose value more quickly because there are more models like the 5c
 
Walked in at noon on iPhone 5 launch and didn't have to wait. 16gb ATT Black. Sprint and Verizon people had to wait for some reason.

I was with Sprint at the launch of the 5 and there was no line at all. AT&T across the street had a much longer line going down the block. Should've realized why nobody was at Sprint at that time.
 
Walked in at noon on iPhone 5 launch and didn't have to wait. 16gb ATT Black. Sprint and Verizon people had to wait for some reason.

Wouldn't you assume that having preorders helped that situation? This year could be worse...that's what I'm thinking.
 
I'm in a fairly "high-demand" Apple area. I stood in line for the first iPhone (which was easy, since not too many "real world" people cared about it), but I've preordered everytime they have offered that since I have better things to do with my life.

That said, I've swung by the local Apple Store (Tysons Corner, by no means a low-profile store) on each of those launch days at lunch to see what's up. Every time, there were still phones and no (appreciable) line. The campers had long since bought and left. But, on each occassion, the store was sold out (of most versions, at least) by the middle of the weekend.

Bottom line, day 1 might work out. But don't wait.

I am not in love with the 5s, so I'm certainly not camping out. I'll swing by during the day and - if they have them in stock - I'll judge one in person.
 
How does lining up at a mall work anyway? Do you line up outside the main entrance? Is it organized with official people?

Depends on the mall. Some will let you sleep and stand inside, and some won't. The ones here are pretty cool about letting people stay inside.

I really don't see there being rabid demand for the 5s, so lining up might not be necessary. You can probably walk up to the store on the 20th and be out within a half hour.
 
Again,yours is a rare occurrence.Both Stores in the Ft Myers area were out of stock by 10am.And as mentioned earlier,with no preorder this time around,lines will be far longer.

That's funny, I'm in Brevard Florida and I walked right into the ATT store on launch day and got my wife a black 64gb iphone 5. No waiting. So either you are full of it or you are full of it.
 
Without pre-orders, I fear this year will be far worse. This is of course dependent on where you are. I am in central florida. There is one mall in the area that allows people to line up, the others do not. The ones that do not result in a mad trample-inducing dash to the door from across the street when the mall opens. I avoid those situations.

Out of curiosity, which mall did you go to? I'm in central FL too; the 4 was my one and only line-up experience and was at Millennia. I reserved during presales because I couldn't order one for reasons best known to Apple's system, got there at 5 am (they'd said they wouldn't allow anybody on site before 5) on launch day, and ended up waiting until about noon. It was insanity. Didn't help that they insisted on walking everyone through everything, giving "new to iPhone" tutorials, etc. I'm still on the fence as to how I'm going to deal with it this year.
 
Out of curiosity, which mall did you go to? I'm in central FL too; the 4 was my one and only line-up experience and was at Millennia. I reserved during presales because I couldn't order one for reasons best known to Apple's system, got there at 5 am (they'd said they wouldn't allow anybody on site before 5) on launch day, and ended up waiting until about noon. It was insanity. Didn't help that they insisted on walking everyone through everything, giving "new to iPhone" tutorials, etc. I'm still on the fence as to how I'm going to deal with it this year.

The Florida mall was the only place (as far as I'm aware) that allowed people to line up outside the mall the night before. We were at the entrance next to the M&M store. The line stretched all the way to the hotel before 7 AM when we were allowed in the building. Not exaggerating when I say that the snake queue stretched down the hallway in front of the Apple store, down the entire next hallway and half way down the next. As you know, this is not a small mall.

Like I said, it depends on where you are. There wasn't an AT&T store in the Orlando area (I was looking for a friend of mine) that had an iPhone 5 for weeks. I don't have an answer for why it was so different here. It seems unlikely that the staff at the stores couldn't or wouldn't check the inventory in Cocoa to find those phones that BJonson had no problem picking up, but I suppose it's possible.

If I remember correctly, this was the first time they offered pre-orders and it showed. The walk-in line didn't move for almost two hours after the store opened and they had extremely limited walk-in stock. Hopefully things have improved by now.

It was a fun experience, but I'm not interested in doing it again.
 
I spoke to an employee at the Baybrook Apple Store in Friendswood, TX. He said to get there as early as I can, but that the mall has not said when they will let people inside.
 
I plan on swinging by the AT&T store around 7 am to see what it's like outside. But what about other stores, like Target, Best Buy, Walmart? I've been trying to find out if Walmart will have it available at midnight but no one has been able to tell me anything. The clueless person I talked to said they'll probably have them toward the end of the month:confused:
 
Uh. No. The iPhone 5 was sold out here for weeks after launch last year.

To the OP - For the iPhone 4, I showed up at 10 PM the night before and was 32nd in line. I also received one of the last two "walk-in" phones that Apple had. THere were literally thousands of people in line. It snaked the entire width of a mall hallway and down two and a half full length mall hallways by the time I left at 1 PM the next day. Yeah, it took that long to get through the store at line position 32.

Without pre-orders, I fear this year will be far worse. This is of course dependent on where you are. I am in central florida. There is one mall in the area that allows people to line up, the others do not. The ones that do not result in a mad trample-inducing dash to the door from across the street when the mall opens. I avoid those situations.

Which mall allows line up? Millennia? Or Florida Mall?
 
Do people work?

While I'm not planning on lining up, I find it odd you cannot envision a scenario where someone could hold a full time job and still be able to line up for a release. I have three and a half days off midweek working full time. My wife has two days off on the weekend, I know people that work seven days on four days off, repeating. With billions of people on this planet working, I'm sure there are plenty more scenarios where someone would be able to line up for something on a certain day without having to sacrifice a minute of their full time job.
 
I'm already camping outside the apple store in Washington. Got my Coleman camper, plenty of steaks, and warm socks in case it gets cold. I'm getting this iPhone 5C suckers!
 
I am in central florida. There is one mall in the area that allows people to line up said:
Which mall is tha?. I've been attempting to figure that out. I'm from central Florida as well.

-skilbo
 
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