iPhone Line Forms Already at Apple’s 5th Ave Store

Bystanders were puzzled by the spectacle of several dozen people waiting in line outside the iPhone Apple store in Manhattan this morning. Geeks lining up 18 days early, in anticipation of the expected June 9 launch of the iPhone 2.0?

Sorry, guess again. Most of the people in line were waiting for a chance to buy the last of the iPhone 1.0 inventory.

An interesting detail: “For some reason the majority of people waiting in line were Asian,” reports Jonathan Accarrino from MethodShop.com, who took the photos below. His theory: People were paying folks from Chinatown to buy iPhones on their behalf, in order to get around Apple’s per-customer limits.

If that’s the case, we can guess where most of those iPhones are headed: Straight to China, where there’s a thriving market for black-market iPhones. Get them while you can, folks, because after iPhone 2.0 launches, it will be at least a few weeks before hackers are able to jailbreak the new model and start shipping it overseas to the few countries not covered by Apple’s world-domination plan.

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