It's finally here: Leopard launch day! So I headed down to my local Apple store in Knoxville to join in the fun (and pick up shirt along with a nice new 24" iMac). I thought I'd take you along for the ride. As per usual with the Apple Store, things were run to near perfection. By 6pm the line was well down that wing of the Mall, and when the doors opened they just started handing out shirts to everyone in line. I got there a little late and so was standing in line for about 20 minutes before I got my shirt. They even sent out an Apple Store employee with a cart full of bottled water to hand out to folks in line. There was an impressive number of Apple Store employees, some of them apparently on the store floor for the first time that night.
Once in the store, we entered another rapidly moving line. We were met at the head of the line by an Apple Store employee who asked what we wanted, then scurried off to get the iMac. They came back, took our credit card with their little PDA-like devices and we were off. As you can see in the gallery, many other folks were playing with the display Macs, talking to Apple Store employees, and generally enjoying the up-beat vibe of the Leopard launch.
As I said before, I was absolutely impressed by how well run the entire thing was. Even though there were hundreds of people there, we were back in the car and headed home by 6:45pm with our precious new iMac. My biggest surprise is that they weren't hawking external hard drives more. Sure enough when I opened the box of the iMac there was fresh copy of Leopard waiting to be installed.
We don't want to imply that the iPhone 3G S launch was a dud. There's reports out that the 3G S may have sold more units than the 3G on opening day, but even more reports are coming in that the lines and general mayhem at Apple and AT&T stores were much more subdued this year than in previous years. There's a lot of speculation as to why, but we at TUAW figured we'd go straight to the source and ask our dear readers. Why weren't you in line this morning?
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