I have to say that I was wrong, and Apple was right – people are stupid and will pay anything Apple asks them for sod all innovation. It looks like my optimism in the general evolution of humanity is ill-founded.

Long, snaking lines formed outside Apple as fans flocked to buy the new iPhone X. Strong initial demand underscores Apple’s upbeat sales forecast for the year-end holiday shopping season, provided just hours before iPhone X sales began.

More than 400 Australians queued outside Apple’s flagship store in central Sydney to pay $1,218 for the 10th-anniversary model. Just 30 people turned up for the September release of the iPhone 8, an incremental update of the iPhone 7.

The firm opened pre-orders on Oct. 27 and has said demand was “off the charts”. Of course, it would say that.

In Apple’s Omotesando store in Tokyo, some 550 people were waiting in a line stretching to around 600 metres.

K Yip in Hong Kong told Reuters his chain of small telecoms shops bought around 500 iPhone Xs for resale, mostly to mainland Chinese, but said the iPhone buzz was not as frenzied as before.

China iPhone sales have sagged in recent years as consumers switch to cheaper phones, while China becoming a launch market has hit demand for Hong Kong handsets.

“People in China can just go online to order, so there’s less demand (in Hong Kong)”, Yip said.

Zhou Ying, a Beijing-based iPhone trader since 2010, echoed the sentiment.

“It is getting harder and harder for us to scalp iPhones. It is not the same as before”, Zhou said, adding she bought two at a premium of 300 yuan and hoped to make several hundred yuan in profit through resale.

Lines were a bit slow in New York City with a salesperson at one shop in the Upper West Side telling Reuters only 20 people had queued up so far.

The only thing different from previous models is the removal of the physical home button and fingerprint sensor formerly used for unlocking. Instead, the iPhone X is unlocked with a so-called Face ID system, in which the user looks into a depth-sensing camera. It also has an OLED screen and a price tag which ends up being double the price of the old phone.