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It was all people could do not to push and shove, but the 300-plus people waiting in line to buy an iPhone outside the downtown San Francisco Apple Store on Friday night kept it friendly. No brawls. No harsh words. Just cheers and excited expressions.

It surely helped that as each group of 20 or 30 people were let in, a cadre of black T-shirt-clad Apple Store employees clapped for them, cheered, and offered high fives. And that was just to enter the store. Clerks on the floor helped people quickly, using wireless handheld devices to register the sale (receipts were printed at the front desk). They encouraged you to "check out the cases" while you waited for them to bring your phone, but otherwise completed the transactions with dispatch. After entering the store, the entire transaction took all of 20 minutes, tops.

Cheers and more cheers. Apple Store employees start applauding just a few minutes before 6 p.m.

Even Jonathan Ive showed up to take it all in. Apple's senior vice president of industrial design - only the design brain behind the iPhone himself - was casually dressed, as usual, and sported a day or so's worth of stubble. He looked happy about all the commotion, and hung out in the store's lower floor sales area, chatting with people he knew.

Yes, it's him, Jony Ive, in the flesh.

As of 8:30 Pacific Time, there was no word on whether the downtown San Francisco store was sold out of iPhones, but there didn't seem to be any danger that those still lining up around 7 p.m. would be turned away. Hopeful iPhone buyers can go online nightly to check availability. Inventories are updated at 9 p.m. daily.

This guy was happy to return a high five on his way in.

At AT&T stores around the Bay Area, there seemed to be a healthy supply of iPhones too. Of course, customers were limited to just one phone. And anyone who bought a phone from AT&T didn't get the ultra-snazzy iPhone bag created especially for the product and given to all iPhone buyers at Apple Stores. In fact, AT&T store shoppers got an extra admonition not to open their sealed plastic bag "until they got home." When asked why, one store clerk said, "It's company policy."

Given that many San Francisco customers wore black T-shirts and Apple logo wear, it was sometimes hard to tell them apart from store employees.

There's no word yet whether the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York - which is normally open 24 hours - will sell out of iPhones tonight. Rumors of scant inventory seemed unfounded. "I guess I didn't need to get in line because they have thousands of them in there," one line-stander told the New York Times. Clearly explaining why he was standing in line, another New Yorker likened the iPhone to "a dream wife."

The scene outside the downtown San Francisco Apple Store at midnight, 12 hours before the doors would open to admit iPhone buyers.

The street outside the San Francisco Apple Store will feel positively abandoned tonight around 3 a.m. The sidewalk already looked worse for the wear at 7 p.m., with line campers' trash and abandoned fortifications strewn about, the only evidence that this was the scene that led up to what could mark one of the most talked-about product launches of this century.

So this is how someone passed his or her time in line.