The first customer inside the store was Richard Gutjahr, a 37-year-old from Munich, Germany. "It's changing the way media will be possible," he said of the new device. Gutjahr said he showed up at the store around noon on Friday. "I spent the night here. It was cold, but it was okay".

Could a device (even one from Apple) possibly live up to such hype. "I haven't been able to test it yet," Gutjahr said, "but I'm very eager to find out."

"I'm in brand heaven right now", said Jacob Anenoft, 37, who works in IT. When asked to show off some of the iPad's features, he held up his iPad to reveal a blank screen with nothing more than an iTunes logo. "I need to connect it to iTunes first, so I need to go home very soon," he said.

Across the state in Buffalo, the scene repeated itself, though on a much smaller scale. As early as 6 a.m., two small lines of about 50 people (one for those who had reserved their iPads through Apple's online store and another one for those in standby) had already formed outside the . Every window was dressed up with either large ads for the iPad or drapes over displays that, according a store employee, were not to be unveiled until shortly before the device's official launch. By 9 a.m., the line had grown into the hundreds, stretching all the way to the end of the store's block and around the corner.

Meanwhile, helpful store employees were continuously scouring the lines, ensuring that everyone was in the right place, checked in, comfortable and well hydrated--as well as, of course, showing off some of the accessories that were going to be available for purchase later. Inside the store, Apple had set up a quick activation service to get iPads up and running via iTunes, as well as a personalized "one-on-one" set up, in addition to several workshops through the day.