Milwaukee, Wisconsin - The hypequake that ramped up expectations and created long queues ahead of the iPhone's launch on June 29 left Middle America more stirred than shaken.
While the media made much of the masses who queued overnight or longer to be among the first in line at Apple and AT&T stores on the right and left coasts of the United States, here in the heartland of America, you didn't even have to queue to get your hands on an iPhone.
Not even on Day 2.
And despite the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel devoting its main story on page one to the iPhone that day.
'The faithful are flocking to the altar of the iPhone. Has the Apple phenomenon become a religion?' it suggested.
Maybe, but not yet. At the Apple store in the Bayshore shopping centre in suburban Milwaukee, there were no queues around the block, no frantic reselling and no shortage of iPhones. Not even 24 hours after the launch frenzy.
The cash registers were ringing but all was calm. If you wanted to play with an iPhone at the demonstration station, there was no need to wait.
Among the browsers was Mr Ark Akhmad, 33, who described himself as a business analyst in the infocomm technology field. He's interested, he said, but didn't plan on buying immediately. Price and functionality were his main concerns.
What feature would he like the iPhone to have that his Motorola cellphone doesn't?
GPS, he said.
Mr Chris Busalacchi, 39, a long-time AT&T customer who's in the roofing business, was also not ready to commit. If there were a 3G model, that might decide it, he said.
His Motorola is on a corporate plan. What would be involved in switching to an iPhone? The Apple guy wasn't sure, so he passed the buck to AT&T.
From the feedback online, a lot of that was going on.
'Can I really buy an iPhone right now?' I asked. 'Sure thing,' said one Apple employee.
Both models are available, he said, though he wouldn't say how many they had in stock nor how many it had sold so far.
All information on the iPhone, I was told, had to come from the Mothership.
Meanwhile, some of those who hoped the ultra-desirable gadget would earn them ultra-quick profits via eBay are probably stuck with their purchases now.
Two Saturdays ago, auction site eBay still showed a few auctions still in play that hoped to earn the sellers as much as US$1,400 (S$2,128) for a gadget freely available for US$600 and sales tax.
The USA may be the only country where you can buy an iPhone thus far.
But iPhone awareness, if not iPhone mania, has reached far and wide. Even avowed technophobes haven't been able to dodge the hype completely even if they never intend to buy an iPhone.
If you read a newspaper or watch TV, it hasn't been possible to avoid the articles and ads in the weeks before the launch and in the immediate aftermath.
Even in Singapore, when I let my friends know that I would be away for nearly two months, three of them asked if I could somehow, someway, somewhere buy them iPhones sans service contracts. (The monthly fees range from US$60 to US$100).
Already, techies are talking about the possibility of Apple announcing Version 2, a 3G iPhone as early as the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco next January.
