The New York Post has an article today on the mania––in the truest sense of the word––surrounding the eventual release of Apple's iPhone, a device that is a phone, digicam, organizer, Internet browser, and iPod wrapped into one sleek-looking package. The Post found people willing to camp, pay, or have sex in trade for the latest and greatest in soon-to-be-ubiquitous personal technology.
Harris Levinson, 34, a video production supervisor for Conde Nast, is paying his brother and two friends $150 each to stand in line at Apple stores in three different states to make sure he gets at least one.“I have to cover my bases,” said Levinson, who’s dispatched phone-buying surrogates to New York, Kentucky and Tennessee. “What if one of them doesn’t work?”
Levinson's other strategies included "jokingly" asking one of his female friends to sleep with an Apple Genius in trade for an iPhone and handing off his business card to an AT&T employee with a $100 bill attached. Neither gambits worked, unsurprisingly. A plastic surgeon from Long Island is offering to pay for people to wait in line overnight in order to get him a phone. He wants one right before he goes on vacation so he'll have time to "play around with it." If you're going on a 4th of July vacation with a Dr. Harris, get ready for some fun times.
A 21-year-old Pace University student is prepared to camp out on the sidewalk in order to get his iPhone. "It really makes a social statement. I want to be the first to have it.” It does indeed make a social statement.





its a phone you idiots! our leaders are fucking us every which way and youre standing online for a PHONE. I want you all to die.
this why our society is like this.
everyone wants material things instead of realizing what is really important in life.
I sure hope Bush's Countdown clock has started.
The first generation of this thing is bound to be riddled with bugs. No sense in waiting for an over priced faulty phone.
Steve Jobs has a frightening ability (not unlike many cult leaders) to convince consumers to joyfully hand him their money. How much better would the world be if he used his freakish charisma for good rather than to line his own pockets? Take for example, what Bill Gates, the man who is always being portrayed by the media as Darth Vader to Jobs's Skywalker, has done with his fortune. Who is really the better man? The answer is obvious: Jobs is a money-grubbing capitalist who only wants the value of his backdated stock options to increase, while Gates is spending BILLIONS to help fight disease all over the world.
"i Douchebags"
Are all the people that want an iPhone going to shell out the extra money for a data plan? Most of the people I know have their Blackberries paid for by their employer.
These people are pathetic. Who wants to pay 600 dollars for a device you replace every one to two years. Not to mention the irreplaceable battery which if is anything like the ipod loses its ability to hold a charge quite fast. (Now if only they would release the iphone without the phone functions and for 3-4 hundred dollars....)
I'd like to add that the Pace University student who is willing to camp out for an Iphone does not represent the vast majority of Pace students and alumni who have other shit to do then wait for Steve Jobs latest table scraps.
I alreday have a Ipod and a phone. So you stand around to have the convenience of having it both integrated into the same device? In 6 months everyone will have an iphone and you will still be a douchebag basking in the glory that you had it ten minutes before everyone else. Sad
Isn't it amazing that people will pay hundreds to be test subjects? No one knows if this thing is going to be any good, yet people are betting 600 dollars that it will. Curiously it seems like it's the same people that laughed at the kids sleeping overnight for a PS3.
My brother will be getting this thing at launch. I'll get it...when its offered thru Verizon and its free.
Someone is going to kill someone over it. Just watch.
excuse me.
I'm a "mac" person, all three of my comps have been macs.
I use a mac at work too and prefer macs over other pc's.
But I do not get the hype around the phone, and I'm not feeling the design either.
I do not understand why anyone HAS to have this device.
I hope it is engineered better than my MacBook Pro. The fan is rattling again. It took them three weeks to "fix" it the last time.
As has been said: What stupid idiots. It's a PHONE. Who cares? "I can look at websites white sitting in a restaurant." BFD.
well i'm getting one. go ahead losers and use your razr pos. $600 is nothing to some of us. a drop in the bucket. if everyone had one it wouldn't be an elite phone.
$600 is nothing to some of us.
$600 is nothing to me either but I don't like to piss money away. Nor do I need to show off through conspicuous consumption. You must be new money.
I'll wait out the bugs and the prices and the lines. Get me a 2 or 3 generation that will have more features at the same cost, as is Apple's business plan.
Good one, number 17.
I like the cut of your jib.
It is $600. So what? Don't some of you hypocrites buy $600+ leather handbags? Gucci, LV, Tiffany, Rolex, and all those other overpriced luxury items instead of Target or Kmart? First class tickets on planes? $2000/month rent for a 300 sqft apartment instead of living in New Jersey? $1 million for a 1 bedroom in Soho? A $1000 baby stroller? Give me a break. I'll say you are a dumb a** for spending $3.00/lb for grapes at Whole Food when you can get it at $1.50/lb in Chinatown. To each his own so stop crying.
Apple and AT&T had the iPhone tested for 3 months prior in the street. So you aren't total guinea pigs.
Oh yes Bill Gates is so generous that Windows Vista is the only operating system allowed to be installed on any new PC. They have discontinued Windows XP when for 98% of all homes and corporations would work perfectly fine with XP. With that much revenue and stock options, I too would be donating money to save the world and to get my name engraved on some stone and to be praised by the right people at the right institutions with friends in the right places.
Ummm, NO, an emphatic NO to all of the above.
LV? Gucci? the eighties called they want their luxury goods back.
Calm down there gordon gecko.
Dave Hogarty is officially the resident pun title writer of Gothamist.
i used to be on of these "i gotta have it first" individuals. I wouldn't mind dropping a few hundred dollars for the latest gadget - not because I had the enough money to afford it, but because there is a sense of eliteness to owning something new and holding it out on the train or elevator and knowing people are admiring it.
i don't know what happened, but with this iphone launch, that need to have the latest gadget just sorta went away.
#'s [1], [4], and [18] said it best... that's my comment on this matter...
$600 for iPhone...well go ahead it's your money.
CNN Report: According to Asia, the iPhone Sucks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_sZmKH25vM
#4 pegged it.
And with service exclusively from AT&T-now-it's-Cingular-no-wait-it's-AT&T-again i would run not walk away from this thing.
I think the iphone is surely more impressive than just it looks. Silicon Valley Entrepreneur & Strategy Consultant, Sramana Mitra on her blog had mentioned how the iPhone would affect the future. Please read iPhone and the Future.
AT&T had the worst billing practices of all the cell phone carriers. You'll get your bill one month, then you'll get your next bill 3 months later.
#27... so right. but you forgot to mention that whn you're all paid up and you cancel your service, they still send you the bill for years. idiots!
also, they very fact that apple does not have enough iPhones to go around in the first wave is disturbing. does anyone remember the fallout from the PS3 release?
baaaah. baaaah. fucking sheep.
I love my iPod and my MacBook, but people are going over the top for this thing. It's a phone, relax.
And it's way too expensive, however, considering the RAZR was $500 when it first came out and it was just a normal phone, not even a "smartphone", I guess it's a better 500 bucks spent in comparison.
Heh, [19].
It only has a max of 8GB of memory--that's so so so tiny, people are going to be disappointed when they start trying to upload their music collections. Plus, you have to log onto the internet through AT+T's shitty internet connection. Flashy; yes... functional; not just yet.
Wow ! I mean that's really amazing to me . People will stand online for a product that hasn't even been tested on the market yet and shell out $[150] a pop for it . Me, I'll wait for the iphone to circumnavigate the market first before I go out and spend that kind of money for it . By the way, The phone only works if you sign-up with AT&T . So what happens if say you have service from Sprint, OR Verizon ? Ur screwed that's what ! Posted By; "Still Not Amused"