No, this is not a type of STI. It is the name of Apple’s latest operating system, OS X Leopard (10.5). I stood in line at the Apple Store in Mayfair Mall in Milwaukee to be one of the first people to purchase it when it went on sale at 6pm on Friday, October 26th. I waited in line for a little over an hour but used most of that time to study for upcoming micro and psych exams. (Unfortunately, I’m still writing this post on Tiger because I’m forcing myself to wait until Wednesday after the exams are over to install it. I’d have trouble effectively studying if I had Leopard to play with so this is probably a good thing…) Having got my Powerbook G4 back in September ’05 (just before the switch to Intel), I did not have the chance to experience an Apple product launch. Well, I guess I could have bought an iPhone but it is/was a little too expensive for me.
The Apple Store was closed from 4-6pm in order to get it set up with all the Leopard gear. I was the 16th person in line. At about 30 minutes to 6pm I stopped studying and started talking to the interesting Mac people around me. Since I was at the beginning, the people around me were pretty hardcore “Mac heads,” as one of the guys identified himself as. I had a fun time demoing an iPhone and a iPod Touch. I had seen an iPhone before and already knew how incredible that thing was and the iPod Touch was amazing as well. It is so thin! Now if only Apple will allow 3rd party apps on the Touch as well… (It already does have Safari though.)
With about 2 minutes to go before 6pm the Apple Store employees let about the first 25 people walk up to the store and form a line. With 10 seconds to go they started the countdown and at 0 seconds the door to the store was opened and we marched in. All the employees were cheering and clapping their hands (and everyone else in the mall must have been wondering what the heck was going on). The first thing we got to do was grab a free Leopard t-shirt. Apple had provided each store with enough t-shirts for the first 500 people. I still had a bunch of studying to do so I just got in the line for buying Leopard and within minutes had bought it. It came in a cool looking case with a hologram “X” and the purple aurora in the background. On the back it says “Designed and engineered by Apple in California.” I then played around in the new iMacs for awhile. Leopard is amazing. I’m just going to love the new QuickLook feature. The cheering continued as we left. Customers got a standing applause as they left the store!
It is amazing how much loyalty Apple can command. For what other product do people wait in line to buy even though purchasing it later or online would be much quicker (and maybe cheaper)? People did camp out for the Wii and PS3 but those things were in scarce supply. For Leopard I could walk into the store tomorrow and buy it no problem. Or I could have even ordered it online and got it delivered before the 6pm release. However, I still chose to attend the release party. It is probably all due to the “experience” of being there. Part of the fun is being around people that are interested in the same things you are. The free t-shirt was nice too. You can bet that I’ll be wearing that shirt proudly at the library while studying tomorrow! 🙂
More details after I install it.