June 29, 2007: Waiting at the San Francisco and Cincinnati Apple Stores on iDay

Enlarge / On the evening of June 29, 2007, everyone was doing this, right? (credit: Jacqui Cheng)

Ten years ago today, folks like our own Lee Hutchinson waited (in line or online) for the first iPhone's formal release. We've been examining the product's impact all week as it turns 10, and today we couldn't help but resurface our version of those infamous "look at that line, tho" stories from a decade ago. These pieces originally ran on June 29, 2007.

CINCINNATI, Ohio—Everyone else is covering the iPhone line in budding metropoli (is that a word?) euch as New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago. I hear there were 50+ people in line for the iPhone at the Michigan Avenue Apple Store in downtown Chicago as of 5am. Well, we thought we'd do something different (OK, maybe we had to because we were going to that darn wedding later) and cover iPhone line-waiters in a slightly less popular city... the budding metropolis of Cincinnati, Ohio.

I used to live in Cincinnati, and so I was familiar with the landscape when I arrived. I showed up at Kenwood Towne Center Mall at 7:45am Eastern Time, expecting at least 20 people to be in line. This is what I saw when I got there.