Pursuits
IPhone 5: A Dispatch From the Front Lines
The early birds outside a New York Apple Store were there for anything but the new iPhone 5
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There were only about seven people camped outside Apple’s Fifth Avenue store on Sept. 17, waiting for the Sept. 21 release of the iPhone 5. In a one-hour period no fewer than a dozen journalists visited those seven people. This was the observer effect in full—the act of watching a thing didn’t just change the thing being watched, it was the thing itself.
“I’m just here because I wanted to experience urban camping,” said third-place line-waiter Jessica Mellow, who blogs about her line-waiting experiences past and present at iphonewhatever.com and is a marketing and promotions freelancer. She is also into body painting. “It’s such a fun way to meet new people and have a new experience.”