Geeks on parade. That best describes the crowd outside the Apple store, any Apple store, last week when the new iphone became available.

The line to get the new phone stretched across seven storefronts, about 75 yards, or several hundred geeks. People who reserved the new iphone in advance were 75 yards from Apple nirvana. Those without reserved phones were 75 yards in the other direction from a roll of the dice—-there were not enough unreserved phones available for all of them. One customer, I overheard, showed up at 5 a.m. and got into the store about 12 hours later.

Almost to a person, the people waiting in the lines already had iphones and spent their waiting time messing with them. Why were they there? They already had phones that are, presumably, able to send and receive calls. What more do you need? New technology, I guess.

We, the whole family unit, stood in that line for two and one-half hours, then spent another 45 minutes inside the store consummating our purchase. I haven’t figured out my function in all this. It was not comic relief . . . I was not a happy camper. But, it was son’s birthday present.

If the Apple folks were truly geniuses, as they profess, they would have taken reservations along with reserving the new phones. That way, you could show up at the assigned time instead of waiting hours in line. The geniuses posted a sign that said “reservations,” but clearly don’t understand the concept.

It would seem that after all the product rollouts that Apple has staged over the years, they would find a more efficient way to deal with the masses wanting the latest gadget. My wife, Lil’ Red, has a theory about that—-she believes that Apple purposefully creates the long waiting lines for publicity. The marketing strategy is that if all these people standing in line want the new gizmo, it really must be worth having.

What is so neat about the new iphone totally escapes me, but I also admit to not being that technologically curious. Son has not quit playing with it long enough to give a rundown on its special features. Whatever they are would most likely be beyond my abilities, and beyond my interest.

My cellular telephone, like others before it, is a hand-me-down from either my wife or son. The current model, amazingly, sends and receives calls, accesses the Internet and e-mail, takes pictures, sends and receives text messages, and has a calculator, alarm clock and calendar, among other features. I confess to holding out on the textmessaging craze until recently. I received and sent my first text messages around Easter. My message total since then is about two dozen, compared to 10,000 a month sent and received by my son.

While waiting in the iphone line, I decided to try and do a little work on my telephone and commenced to writing this column on its tiny little keyboard. It was a challenge. I finished the column on a full-sized computer the next day at the office, although I could have finished it in line if fiddling with the device didn’t make me feel selfconscious.

Why did I feel self-conscious when hundreds around me were also fiddling with their phones? It made me look like a geek. But, after all, I was in the right place.