Camping out at 6-7 PM the night before at my local Apple Store. Should be enough for me to be first in line!
6-7PM makes you first in line in your city? Lucky you.
Last year, I camped out for the iPhone 5s, but even arriving there at 4PM the day before didn't land me the coveted first-in-line spot (@ the Lincoln Road Apple Store, Miami Beach, FL)... I was #10'ish, ending up behind folks who had gotten payed to stand in line by others, and behind bona-fide customers as well, I think. And when Apple staff arrived and issued us tickets for the iPhone model we wanted, at around 7AM the day of, the lady who gave me my card told me I was getting the last ticket for the last available unit of the model I wanted... 32gb, white. Talk about cutting it close!
In the past, I camped out at a different Apple Store for the iPhone 4, an experience which was was both exhilarating and horrible at the same time. It was an Apple Store located inside a mall, and mall security (and Apple staff, for that matter) had made absolutely no preparations to designate an official, mall-sanctioned place for the line to form, pre-launch-day. Those of us who were camping out had to improvise when deciding where to form the line, and our carefully thought-out decisions on locations to form the line were not always met with agreement on the part of mall security?who wasted little time in calling Miami-Dade Police for reinforcement when we (very politely) refused to relocate in an orderly, timely, submissive fashion when asked to do so. We were subsequently forced to relocate the line by said policemen, once by the first shift of policemen working the event (these cops eventually dropped out of sight after succeeding in making us move), then a later shift of police officers claimed no previous communication from the earlier shift and made us relocate the line again, and I don't mean relocating by a short distance of a few tens of feet (one relocation involved hitching a ride with a fellow camper-out in order to get to the new spot in a reasonable amount of time).
An unofficial sign-up list on a poster that was made by one of the campers-out (he had thoughtfully made the poster himself at home and brought it with him) would have sufficed to keep everyone in their right spot in line without disagreement, even after relocations, but alas, this is Miami. Don't confuse us for a civilized and polite people.
I will probably order at apple.com this year at midnight, or, failing that, att.com. (An additional reason why I camped out last year for the 5s last year was that I secured a buddy for that camp-out, and I have no such person this year... This does play a factor as far as I'm concerned... camping out solo is not nearly as much fun as camping out with a friend, even though, by the end of the event, I would likely have become "buddies" with the people in the immediate area in line).
Good luck to all of you this year. Hope you get the iPhone 6 of your dreams.