Some have noted that the lines for the iPhone 4S on Friday were disappointingly short. Apple might have sold a record 4 million devices in four days, but the launch day lines were nothing compared to those for the iPhone 4 or the iPad 2.
But there was one place where the lines went around the block — and no one seems to have reported it yet.
In most places, the lines for the iPhone 4S were nothing compared to previous Apple product launches. In San Francisco, for example, the 300 people or so that lined up all had their iPhones about 30 minutes after the store opened.
The relatively short lines were due to several factors, including the fact that the iPhone 4S was on sale at a wide variety of outlets and not just the Apple Store — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Target, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Walmart, etc.
But more importantly, the 4S was available for preorder, which the iPad 2 was not. That means a lot of customers preordered their phone for delivery by UPS.
But many of those people weren’t home on Friday to receive their order. The crazy lines for the 4S weren’t at Apple, but at UPS late into Friday night.
A friend in the East Bay said he ditched the line at his local UPS and 8:40pm when there were still more than 100 people in front of him.
Look at the photo above. The pickup point is off the frame to the right, near the blue light.
“I estimated about 100 people in line ahead of us, plus 20 or so behind us when we finally ditched the line,” he said.
UPS hasn’t released any numbers about the number of iPhone 4Ss it delivered on Friday, or how late its package centers stayed open on Friday night. We’ve reached out to UPS for some numbers and comment, and will update this post.
Thanks Ken!
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
13 responses to “There Were Long Lines For The iPhone 4S No One Has Reported Yet”
If this was the line at the UPS on Pardee in Oakland, I was there. It did not seem like UPS had much of a game plan and one department was not speaking to the other. The biggest hold up once you got up to the counter was that you were ON the list to receive a package but apparently A LOT of the iPhones that were out to be delivered were not back in time to UPS to be picked up. The rub is that the majority of people (myself included at 10am) received a call from UPS saying to be at this site between 8:30 – 9:30pm to “pick-up” your iPhone. Many people had to wait while UPS was waiting on trucks to get back and drop off iPhone packages. Another issue (some customers got REALLY hot about this one) is that your ID had to correspond with the address for the delivery. There were a lot of people who had IDs that showed a different address, myself included. You could solve this if you had some mail with your name and current address but most peeps in line weren’t aware of that. I got in line at 8:20am and didn’t leave until 10:05pm and there were so many more people behind me in line!
If this was the line at the UPS on Pardee in Oakland, I was there. It did not seem like UPS had much of a game plan and one department was not speaking to the other. The biggest hold up once you got up to the counter was that you were ON the list to receive a package but apparently A LOT of the iPhones that were out to be delivered were not back in time to UPS to be picked up. The rub is that the majority of people (myself included at 10am) received a call from UPS saying to be at this site between 8:30 – 9:30pm to “pick-up” your iPhone. Many people had to wait while UPS was waiting on trucks to get back and drop off iPhone packages. Another issue (some customers got REALLY hot about this one) is that your ID had to correspond with the address for the delivery. There were a lot of people who had IDs that showed a different address, myself included. You could solve this if you had some mail with your name and current address but most peeps in line weren’t aware of that. I got in line at 8:20am and didn’t leave until 10:05pm and there were so many more people behind me in line!
Is anybody surprised that UPS doesn’t have their act together?! I never ever use them, they are the worst!
The UPS guy that delivered my phone said their depot received 43,000 phone!
my ups guy said 850k. Im guessing thats nationwide, could be worldwide tho
And this is news because? I feel sorry for all these people who didn’t properly plan… If you’re going to PRE ORDER an iPhone, you might not want to leave the house even for 1 minute on the day you’re expecting delivery…. I’m just saying…. And no, you can’t just to go UPS and expect it to be there if the item didn’t make it to your door step, the trucks aren’t all back at the same time and even if they are, they don’t have any logical system setup for getting your package to you… they are supposed to go back out for re-delivery the next day unless you called UPS and pre-arranged to pick it up… but even then your best bet is to pick it up the next day because the truck might not be back yet.
Lines at the UPS pickup are a nightly affair near by house, even without the iPhone. It’s usually 10-20 people on a normal night; nothing like the 100+ people in line here. Maybe this should let UPS know it really needs to get its after-hours pickup operations optimized.