By Kate Augusto

The 164 Apple retail stores located across the nation stayed open until midnight June 29, to service eager customers with the latest Apple technology: the iPhone, a combination phone, media player and web browser.

Johnny Sullivan, a middler graphic design major, was one customer who waited in line for 12 hours to get his hands on the phone.

“When I brought it home the first time, I showed it to my mom, and the first thing she said was that it was the coolest thing she had seen since the VCR was put out on the market,” Sullivan said. “It’s a constant conversation piece. When I’m at work and I have it out, people are always asking to play around with it.”

Northeastern students who work out at the Marino Center, however, may face questions if they try to use their new iPhones at the gym. Northeastern is the first university in the country to implement a no-phone policy in the gym, which means few gym-goers get by the front desk of the Marino Center with their cell phones in use, said Omar Rouhana, office manager of Northeastern’s Department of Athletics and Recreation.

Rouhana said the policy against cell phone use was implemented in 2003 to prevent people from taking pictures of others in the locker room, disturbing others with their phone conversations and hurting themselves on machines because of distractions. However, the policy should not affect the use of iPhones as a music device, Rouhana said.

“There are already phones out there that have MP3 capability,” Rouhana said. “When we question students with those phones, and they say they are using it to listen to music, we let them. The same thing will apply to iPhones.”

Kellie Lynch, a sophomore biology major who works at the Marino Center, does not have an iPhone, but says it would make sense for Marino Center staff to adhere to the no-phone policy.

“I’ll admit that once I saw a geeky TA of mine at the gym and it was funny because he had tall white tube socks on with his shorts