First-order effects

• PR representatives gain direct, in-person access to Scoble and other queue-bound writers, walking clients past the line for demos instead of competing for email attention.
• Shoppers at the Palo Alto store face Apple's two-iPhones-per-person purchase cap on launch night, shaping who walks out with product.

Second-order effects

• The queue itself becomes a pitching venue: whoever controls a blogger's idle hours controls the demo slot, so PR shops start treating launch lines as earned-media real estate rather than a nuisance to manage.
• Apple's scarcity mechanics — limited units, capped purchases — are what manufacture the crowds that make the queue attractive to publicists in the first place, feeding back into the launch spectacle.

Third-order effects

• If launch-day lines keep concentrating press attention this way, blogger relations become a standard part of product-launch planning alongside traditional press outreach, with individual writers treated as venues rather than audiences.
• The longer pattern points toward launch events being co-produced by the crowd: the retailer supplies scarcity, fans supply the line, and marketers supply the walk-bys — a structure that persists as long as supply stays visibly short.