Apple: Waiting for iPhone 5 in NYC in the Early Hours

Apple's Upper West Side store prepares for iPhone 5.

It’s 4:30 am, Eastern time, and I’m standing outside Apple‘s (AAPL) store on 66th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. There’s just a few hours to go before the company opens the doors here in the States to buyers of the iPhone 5. Behind the massive glass exterior, black curtains hide the set-up for the opening day. It’s 63 degrees with a mild breeze.

A line of about 25 people was queued up outside the store along 67th street. Toward the front of the line, two young men named Robert and Pierce sat in folding chairs. They had each taken. A payment for a friend to hold a place in line, a practice that’s been seen frequently at Apple product nights in recent years. The same friend, it turns out: The buyer wanted more than the allotted two phones per customer.

Robert, the lead guitarist in the band Beast Patrol said he would put the money, about $300, toward a new Fender amp. (His band will play at Bowery Electric in Manhattan on October 3rd.) Robert said he currently uses an iPhone 4S, which he likes. While he respects Apple’s excellence, and its might in brining people to wait on line for hours, he said he could wait to get the new model. Pierce, who uses a phone based on Google‘s (GOOG) Android software, said he respected the iPhone but was perfectly content with Android. In fact, he’d be perfectly happy to use a basic flip phone with texting, although he relented that features of Web browsing and such tend to grow on one. “Email is the best,” chimed in Robert.

Apple's flagship 5th Avenue store with the massive glass cube draped in black.

Across town on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, at Apple’s flagship store, the massive glass cube is draped in a black shroud. Camera trucks line the street, while commentators prep their segments. A crowd of what looks like about 200 snakes around the corner of 58th street, up into the plaza, and through the corral of metal barricades. (Neither police nor Apple store staff would hazard a guess in response to my query.)

Crowds of camera crews join the throng outside Apple's flagship 5th Avenue store.

Going on six o’clock, people were continuing to join the back of the line, which extended down 58th street along the FAO Schwarz windows, at a steady clip.

Toward the back of the line, Rod, a member of a flight crew in from his post in Dubai for 24 hours, was trying to decide if he would stay. He had been waiting for 40 minutes and was “sure I can find something else to do” in New York while killing time before his flight back.

Rod has an iPhone 4S and says he’d like to give that one to his son. He’s never waited on a long line for a product like this, though, and the thought of a couple more hours had him weighing the wisdom of sticking around. Among the things he found appealing in contemplating the iPhone 5 was the faster processor (Apple’s home-brewed “A6″ chip), he said, while the larger screen was good but less important to him.

Downtown, in the Meatpacking District, a line of 175 people, by my count, was stretched down 14th Street all the way to Washington Street. (Here’s the panorama.)

a line of 175 or so waits outside Apple's 14th Street store.

The line down 14th street outside the Apple store.

With an hour to go till opening, down in SoHo, at the Apple store on Prince and Greene, a line equally long had wrapped around the corner and stretched all the way down Greene almost to Houston Street. Here, as at 14th Street, the Apple staff on the street was joined by security guards, men in polo t-shirts and slacks with “Squad Security” emblazoned on their chests, who kept watch over the assembled from a distance.

Apple's Soho store an hour before iPhone 5 goes on sale.

The line outside the Apple Soho store wrapped around the corner and stretched all the way down Greene Street.