Crowd Mobs Apple CEO Cook As iPhone X Sales Begin
PALO ALTO (CBS SF) -- It had all the fervor of a circus tent revival meeting.
Apple CEO Tim Cook opened the doors to his company's flagship Palo Alto store early Friday morning, welcoming in more than 100 cheering customers who had spent days huddled in the darkness, awaiting the chance to spend more than $1,000 for the new iPhone X.
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Kathy Jen had been awaiting in line since Tuesday. What has she been doing during her vigil?
"Making new friends, reminiscing with old friends," she told KPIX. "Drinking coffee, eating all the good food on (Palo Alto's) University Ave. and just hanging out."
She called the vigil, the "Apple experience."
"Ordering online and getting it sitting at home all by yourself is kind of boring," she said. "It's much better to come down here and make new friends."
Jen was rewarded for her long wait. She not only did she purchase her new iphone, but she also got a selfie with Cook.
"I'm going home, plugging it (her new iPhone X) in and going to bed," she said. "I need sleep...I've been up since Halloween."
The iPhone X's lush screen and facial-recognition skills is breaking new ground. So much so that the Silicon Valley giant decided to release the iPhone X just six weeks after the new iPhone 8.
"The Super Bowl for Apple is the iPhone X," GBH analyst Daniel Ives said. "That is the potential game changer."
You don't have to tell David Casarez. He also had been in line in Palo Alto since Tuesday and was rewarded with a hug from Cook as he walked into the store.
"I knew that demand was going to be pretty high," he told KPIX 5. "I wanted to be one of the first ones in line."
There were similar scenes across the country as iphone fans formed long lines at Apple stores from New York, Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles and around the world. There even was long line of customers outside the Apple store in Moscow when it opened its doors.