Steve Jobs said in the town hall meeting the day before the iPhone launch day, that we shall forever remember this historic moment and tell our grandkids all about it. On June 29, 2007, I arrived at the Valley Fair mall in Santa Clara and joined the line an hour and half before the store open time at 6pm. The real reason that I wanted to go was I heard Steve Woz was the first in line. Allegedly he arrived at 4am that day on his segway scooter, wearing the iPhone T-shirt that says "the line starts here". He helped keep order by passing out number cards to early arrivals. That was just too funny and I had to leave work early and go check him out. Besides, it was free gelato day from noon to 4pm to celebrate the iPhone launch, so most of my coworkers were nowhere to be found after noon. So I got there, saw Steve Woz, clad in that white T-shirt, obviously unshaven (he never had the clean look anyway). There were 4 segway scooters neatly aligned by the door (probaby his buddies’). I was gonna go home but my boyfriend begged me to wait in line so he could lay his hands on the phone that night. There weren’t as many people as I thought. I thought there’d be about 1000 but there were only 500. I wasn’t too concerned about waiting for 2 hours to get in (with my PSP, 2 hours would feel like 20 minutes), but I didn’t know how long it’d take them to process orders for 500 people. 3 -4 hours right? Most people in line were in their 20s and 30s, in T-shirts, faded jeans, pale and unshaven, with macbook or macbook pro on their laps. Quite a few of them were high school kids. I couldn’t help but wondering if they saved up months for this, or their parents spoil them rotten, or they waited in line for other people on commission. I didn’t see that many girls my age. The guy in front of me called his friend and said "I thought I got here early!" I almost laughed out loud. Later his girlfriend showed up for moral support. I complained to them that I didn’t know why my boyfriend couldn’t wait for 2 days, before I realized I was complaining to the wrong audience. The guy said, "what’s your point!" and everyone laughed. His girlfriend gave me a sympathetic look. After the store opened, I went back in (the line was so long we looped outside of the mall) to check out the store. I saw a guy walking out holding his iphone bags up high, and everyone cheered and clapped. At first I thought he was somebody but couldn’t recognize him at all. Later I realized that the crowd did that to everyone. There was a large crowd outside the store not interested in buying the phones, but just wanted to watch the geeks in line. They really had nothing better to do I guess, but I suppose we did look like a bunch of idiots waiting in such a long line, when we could’ve easily ordered on line. The line moved rather quickly, to my surprise, and in less than an hour we were in the store. While we were still outside the mall, his little sister went to Jamba Juice, and I was joking that we’d probably get our orders at the same time. And it turned out we did. She came back a couple of minutes before we finalized the orders. The way they sped things up was that the employees had cordless credit card processors, so they scanned your credit cards as soon as you step into the store, and they would send receipts to your email address (to save paper they said). My boyfriend shopped there before so they had his email add on file. It happened so quickly I didn’t even know when he was done. BTW, no employee discount on iphones, but accessories are ok. When we walked out, the store clerks lining up by the door applauded and cheered. I didn’t know if I was supposed to smile and showed that I was a proud iPhone owner, even though I’m not? But if I don’t smile i’d feel bad for the clerks. Anyway, although unnecessary, I’m glad I joined the party. It was fun to chat with fellow Apple fan boys in line, and the store order arrangement was really impressive. I won’t do any review for the iPhone, since my boyfriend won’t depart with it the whole weekend. I can tell you this, he absolutely loves it!