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As iPhone fever continues to burn up geeks everywhere, I found it rather odd that though reports of line-camping were coming out of places such as New York City, the Union Square of the west coast, in San Francisco, has been curiously sans lines at local iPhone dealerships. Perhaps later today, the poor-excuses-for-lines will grow into something resembling a unified effort to obtain Apple’s latest toy, but thus far they’ve been quite pathetic

Perhaps it’s the fact that San Francisco’s Union Square, home of the flagship Apple store, is the last decisive front between the real-city-appearing Financial District, and the filth that is San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, but something’s been keeping people from camping out in the streets among the legions of homeless. A drive-by of the closest AT&T store revealed a mere eight to ten people waiting for an iPhone, which is much, much fewer patrons than one would expect in such a major city. Even though reports suggest that lines are forming elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay area, these lines are still short, and nothing remotely as geek-inspiring as lines for a major console release.

The poor showing makes one wonder what these people are in line for in the first place. I do not refer here to the treasure that is the iPhone, but rather the advantage of wasting time in line to begin with. Intelligence concerning iPhone production suggests that there won’t be a gap between first-day availability and a second shipment, and given the numbers of iPhones expected at each venue, forming a line is only truly justified if there’s a chance that one won’t get one by just walking in at 06:00 PM That is to say, at the aforementioned AT&T store, do line-sitters really think that the store will only have a dozen or two iPhones available?

Admittedly, a big part of this is the media poorly reflecting iPhone demand. Story upon story is on the news about how cool the iPhone is, and how people are camping out for it. The reality of the situation is rather different, however. For media hype about iPhone demand to be justified, there needs to massive lines throughout the country, with some steadfast reason for line-sitting such as stringent supply limits. This isn’t the Nintendo Wii, however, this is a cell phone whose initial production runs are enormous in comparison.

So for those of you who are sitting in line blowing off an otherwise nice day, I congratulate you on your silliness and, ultimately, awesome new toy. If I wasn’t opposed to paying an early cancellation fee on my better-than-AT&T T-Mobile service, I might just stroll into a local Apple or AT&T shop and buy an iPhone just to mock your efforts.

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