It’s 7:30 a.m. and I’m at the University Village Apple Store in Seattle, so it must be iPhone release day. But the scene here is not like years past, where people would line up hundreds deep to get their hands on the latest smartphone hardware. With 30 minutes to go before the doors open, only three people are lined up waiting, and they all have reservations.
“Last year I came here an hour earlier,” says Cyra Richardson, who is first in the short line. When she got to the line last year, she was far from first. “It felt like there 9 million people. It was great!”
But this year, there is far less of a scene. That’s partially because of the new reservation system, which is required to buy the phone through Apple’s new payment plan. People can just show up at their reservation time and breeze through the door rather than waiting around all day to see if they are lucky enough to get an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus.
In Washington state and many locations throughout the country, every phone in stock is currently reserved. So people who show up to buy one without a phone saved are being turned away. Apple may have restricted the number of phones in retail stores in the area to further combat resellers after restricting sales in Oregon. That’s compounded by the rise of online ordering, which now lets people get their new phones at home, no need to stand in line.
The line did grow as 8 a.m. grew nearer, and when the doors finally opened, only about 20 people got in, despite a host of 8–8:30 a.m. appointments. Another 40 or so were in line to get their phones within the first half hour, and there were some people there for reservations as far away as 4 p.m.
As for the phones people are planning on buying, there were surprisingly few rose gold reservations. Most people I talked to were getting the 6s, not the 6s Plus, and in space gray or white. Most early adopters were also bumping up to the 64GB and 128GB options, with about two thirds buying through Apple’s new yearly upgrade program.
Getting a new Apple product is no longer the celebration it once was. Apple Store employees still cheer as customers walk in, and people leaving are already playing with their new devices. But the lines are shorter, the spectacle is subdued and people just seem to want to move on with their day. As I wait for my 11:30 a.m. appointment, I think I’ll head over to the Windows Store across the parking lot and get some one-on-one time with their touchscreen toys.
