iPhone Mayhem: Robbery, Heat Exhaustion, Shattered Faith - gawker.com

In cities across America, throngs of fanboys are lined up for the new iPhone. There are too many customers, and too few of Apple's shiny new product. The chaos is rising with the summer temperature, and so is the anger.

In New York, the line stretched for at least 3.5 hours at the West 14th Apple Store; the line also looked insanely long in SoHo where one tweeter said it was (or felt like) 100 degrees. In Portland, a reported crowd of 500+ waited for at least 2.5 hours. In San Francisco the 2+ hour morning line had Apple employees considering keeping the store open after hours. Near Seattle the line was two hours. In some locations, the heat and growing crowds cost people more than

mere time. An editor for the tech site Mashable reported getting mugged while waiting to buy the iPhone in Chicago. In Philadelphia, John Gruber, who blogs full time about Apple, said he had a crisis of faith after waiting three hours in the sun and watching "nursing school students... taking temperatures and observing the effects of heat exhaustion." Water was passed out - hotter than coffee, Gruber tweeted — and after four hours people without reserved iPhones were sent home. "Android is suddenly looking tempting," Gruber wrote, referring to the competing smartphone platform from Google.

"Where am I? What am I doing here? What's going on?

Full Article @ Vallywag

Video of lineups around the US

http://mashable.com/...4-launch-video/

Gotta wonder about these guys complaining about lineups. They could have ordered online and gotten it by FedEx by noon, but they chose to be part of the spectacle. And didn't bother to read the weather report or take water?