And it's not like there weren't other ways to get the thing. You could of course, order online and get it in two or three weeks. Or you could go to one of the retail outlets--Best Buy, Walmart, Target--that had iPads for sale (though they may have had a more limited selection). At one point on Friday, somebody drove down the street waving an opened iPad box, shouting, "They've got plenty at Walmart."

But when I asked my line-neighbors why they were there, some looked at me like I was insane for even asking. Most of the others gave me a variation on, "."

Look, I'm around Apple stuff all the time and, yes, I love a lot of it. But I wouldn't stand in line for three hours for any of it if I didn't have to. I usually try to argue against the stereotype of Apple fans, the ones who'll buy with that logo on it; I try to maintain that most of us are really sensible consumers who've made the rational decision that Apple's products are better than the competition's. But standing in that line doesn't seem too rational.

The Apple Store staff at this particular location did not make the wait any easier. They did a lousy job of calibrating expectations. When I'd first arrived, we'd heard that we'd get cards at 4:45 p.m., on which we could indicate which models we wanted (with a limit of two per customer). That would have been great: Store employees could have compared those cards with their inventory and figured out whether or not they had enough iPads on hand. But those cards never arrived.

Even without the cards, someone could have (a) counted heads in the line, (b) counted boxes in the store, and (c) compared the two numbers. It's not that hard. (As one of my Facebook friends quipped, "There must be an app for that.")