After six months of excitement bordering on mass hysteria, the iPhone – aka the God Machine – finally ended up in the hands of a few thousand diehard Apple fans across the United States last night.

In New York those at the front of the queue when Apple’s flagship store in Fifth Avenue opened at 6pm had been camping outside in searing heat for almost a week.

Inevitably, the launch of the iPhone also inspired some entrepreneurial thinking.

An advertiser on Craigslist. com offered to queue on behalf of iPhone buyers in return for $100 (£50) and a $50 delivery fee, while a website offered a cardboard cutout of an iPhone that could be folded over an existing phone, thus avoiding the need to upgrade. An urban travel guide, Gridskipper, published an online “iPhone camp-out guide” – including details of free bathrooms and cheap restaurants near Apple stores.

In Los Angeles the wait for the iPhone was more subdued: there was little or no queueing even on “iPhone Eve” – otherwise known as Thursday night. This was perhaps because the most dedicated Apple fans had flown to New York to get their hands on one three hours before the West Coast.

Apple insisted that all iPhones go on sale at 6pm local time, no matter where in the country, even though that meant that its home state of California was one of the last places where the shiny-black gizmo could be purchased.

In spite of the hype, demand was expected to be tempered by its $500-$600 price, the patchy reputation of Apple’s partner company, AT&T, and concern that the first-generation iPhone may not be reliable. Consumers are also worried about how long the nonremovable battery would last.

Nevertheless, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal published upbeat but cautious reviews of the iPhone this week, the biggest down-side being the relatively slow speed of AT&T’s network and the phone’s inability to work with 3G (mobile internet) services.

The Journal’s technology columnist, Walt Mossberg, concluded: “Despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer.”

Apple is trying to avoid pandemonium at its stores. It has allocated a maximum of two iPhones per customer, and is allowing shoppers to check stock at their local store by logging on to its website.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, has continued to defend the iPhone’s price, pointing out that because it can play music, it includes the equivalent of a free iPod. He also defended his decision to use AT&T’s network, telling The Wall Street Journal: “The iPhone automatically switches to wi-fi whenever it senses a known wi-fi network, and wi-fi delivers data several times faster than 3G networks. So the iPhone sandwiches 3G networks with something a bit slower on the bottom, and something far faster on the top.”

Not even Apple’s biggest fans are entirely convinced but they are not deterred.

“I’m definitely getting the first-generation one within a few days, but I can’t help but know that it’s a bad idea,” a fan wrote on an online Mac forum. “ A p p l e products are always buggy the first generation.”

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