Twenty minutes before doors would open for the Mac OS X Tiger launch party, more than 100 people lined the sidewalk outside the downtown San Francisco Apple store. At least 17 of them sported white iPod earbuds.
For the Mac community, a product launch like this one is a seriously big deal, no matter where you are in the world: On Friday, April 29, more than 1,000 people queued up for the Tiger launch in both the Tokyo and London Apple stores. And while nowhere near that many showed up at Apple’s flagship downtown San Francisco outlet — probably because the Bay Area has 11 stores — company employees and customers were eager for the event.
“It should just be another classic example of how excited our partners and customers are about our products,” said Frank Casanova, senior director for Mac OS X audio and video technologies, 30 minutes before the event began. “I’m like a little kid. This has been a long run for us … and this is it. This is our coming-out party.” (Find photos of the San Francisco Tiger launch.)
Of course, big crowds for Apple product launches are not unusual. Hundreds of people flocked to the company’s dozens of retail outlets for the last OS X update launch in 2003, and similar numbers were on hand when the company unveiled the iPod shuffle during MacWorld in January. And given Mac fans’ fervor for the operating system and for Apple in general, it should come as no surprise that so many of them were determined to be among the very first to get their hands on one of the company’s new products.
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