But the 800 people who arrived early Thursday to buy the iPhone 4 took the cake.
"This is the biggest line we've ever seen for the iPhone," Donovan Gerkin said.
The new iPhone 4, which adds numerous features such as a sharper screen, better camera and a slimmer body, drew lines at all Tulsa area stores offering them to walk-in customers, but the Apple Store at Woodland Hills had the biggest crowd by far.
In fact, many people there didn't just come for the phone. Robbie Jones said he drove more than two hours from his home in Ponca City just to be part of the experience.
"It's the environment," he said. "It's really fun. I saw videos of past launches on YouTube, and I wanted to be part of it."
Ashley Wilson said she and her boyfriend, Kestutis Sulcas, were among hundreds of people clustered outside the mall's eastern entrance in the pre-dawn hours. When the outer door was opened around 5 a.m., people rushed inside to form a more orderly line, and she and Sulcas were lucky enough to camp just outside the shuttered Apple Store.
"The oxygen tasted so good," Wilson said.
Half an hour before the Apple Store opened at 7 a.m., the line stretched on both sides of the mall corridor nearly all the way to the entrance.
Wilson, like many others, passed the time by pecking away at her older-model iPhone. She said she lined up for the very
first iPhone in June 2007, but Sulcas said Thursday was his first time.
"I watched the videos of the Apple keynote that revealed the iPhone, and that really got me excited," he said.
Marc Combs wasn't as lucky as Wilson and Sulcas. Although his family waited outside the mall all night, the rush to line up inside left them in line near the Macy's store, beyond what Apple employees called the "maybe zone" -- that is, Apple might or might not have enough iPhones for them.
Though Combs called his chances of getting a phone "pretty slim," he decided to stick around in case he got lucky.
"We're going to wait it out," he said.
As the minutes ticked away, Apple employees handed out biscuits from Chick-Fil-A and smoothies to the waiting crowd.
Scott Mathison, one of the hundreds in the line, said it was all worth it.
"I'm here because it's a better phone, and it's the fun of the event," he said.
A few minutes after 7 o'clock, the black barriers in front of the Apple store came down, prompting a cheer from the crowd. Within moments, the first store-bought iPhone 4s spread out into Tulsa.
Scenes were similar at many Apple Stores as the phone went on sale in Japan, Germany, France, the U.K. and the U.S.
Natalie Harrison, an Apple Inc. spokeswoman at company headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., said demand was "off the charts" and that Apple was working hard to get phones into customers' hands as quickly as possible.
Brian Marshall, an analyst for Gleacher & Co., said certain Apple stores likely had enough iPhones to last into Friday before selling out. A new shipment could be in stores as early as Saturday, he said, but more likely won't arrive until early next week.
Apple is having a hard time getting enough of the new custom parts for the iPhone 4, such as its new higher-resolution screen, Marshall said.
Apple has said the white iPhone it plans to produce has been more challenging than expected, and won't be available until late July. Only black models went on sale Thursday.
It may also be the case that Apple correctly anticipated opening-day demand but sent too many phones to some of its 200-plus U.S. stores and not enough to others, said Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
