On July 11, 2008, alarm clocks across the country were set earlier than normal. Techies, computer nerds, Apple enthusiasts, Microsoft haters with a sense of perspective, moms and their spoiled children, all awoke at the crack of dawn with a common goal: to purchase the new iPhone 3G.

After grabbing their North Faces and swinging by Starbucks, Western Washington technology fans herded to their local Apple and AT&T retailers to get in line. The stores were scheduled to open at eight o’clock AM and they wanted to get there early, supplies are limited.

The sight of tents and sleeping bags confirmed the worst for these ‘hardcore’ iPhone pursuers: they didn’t get up early enough.

After stifling a yawn and shuffling into line, these shoppers weighed their chances of actually walking away with an iPhone. While Apple stores were well stocked with the shiny new phone, those who thought AT&T might be the smarter location had something else coming to them.

The Apple Store at Bellevue Square, a flagship of Apple’s retail stores in the area, was a hotspot for the iPhone fever.

Approaching the store, one could have been easily deceived by the relatively short line cued out front. Five rows, maybe fifty people tops, perhaps the hype of the iPhone 3G hadn’t lived up to its predecessor.

The expectant look of the Apple employee stationed at the end of the line was unsettling for the newly arrived iPhone hopefuls.

“Are you just arriving?” she might ask from behind her scene haircut and Motorola earpiece.

“Yes…” one might reply, hesitant that they may be missing something.

“This is actually the back of the front,” she would say, faking pity and indicating another Apple employee stationed across the lobby in front of Nordstrom’s.

“Welcome to the actual line,” he would say, his nametag reading Virgil. “Follow me.”

He would then proceed to escort the shopper down the service corridor next to Nordstom’s. This unfinished, artificially light hallway of concrete runs behind every store in the mall to make for unencumbered and unnoticed deliveries. Not even the clinical shopper would ever notice this location, unless they were waiting for a new Apple product.

With the light of the mall fading behind, the newcomer would swear he saw “abandon all hope, you who enter here” written above the entrance.

The hallway was lined by people of all different backgrounds, the same people who had set their alarms: only they had set them earlier. They followed the newcomer with their weary eyes.

“How long have you been waiting here?” the newcomer could have asked.

“You don’t want to know,” the tired customer begrudgingly responds.

Once the hopeful thoroughly lost count of how many turns had been made he or she would finally reach the end of the line: somewhere between the walls of the mall.

Another four and a half hours and they would see the light of the mall again: surreal, with its finished glow. That just left an hour and a half wait in front of the Apple Store and another hour ordeal inside: purchasing their third generation iPhone, and then attempting to activate it, a service unavailable due to technical error in many stores.

Was it all worth it? Is the iPhone really so spectacular that it was worth traveling through the seven layers of hell and back again?

Yes. Yes it was.

While it wouldn’t be prudent to say that Steve Jobs is the twenty-first century’s version of Minos, he does have a way of making people pay for that which they want most: the iPhone 3G.