A lot of people have heard of Apple’s iPhone, and they want to buy one, even if there are rumors of a newer, faster iPhone. Perhaps they haven’t heard of the rumors, or perhaps they don’t even care. That Apple’s Fifth Avenue New York store still has lines of people waiting to buy the first generation iPhone speaks volumes about the product.

It’s an all too comfortable assumption to think that everyone knows what we know. It’s even one of the Myers-Briggs personality traits to believe that other people just always know what we’re thinking.

Apparently not.

Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York

C|Net’s Marguerite Reardon wrote a story yesterday about how customers, 60 at a time, are lining up at New York’s Fifth Avenue Store to buy the current generation iPhone. It’s a great product and not everyone who wants one may even know what a GSM 3G network is or what’s expected, according to rumors, on June 9th at WWDC. So they snap them up, and when the supply is gone, the line disappears, Ms. Reardon reported.

It’s a sobering thought that the ebb and flow of Apple marketing and product awareness doesn’t hinge on the Mac Web’s rumor mill. There are, I suspect, many people who see a friend’s iPhone, or see Mick St. John on CBS’s Moonlight use one, and they just want it. So they go buy one -- if they can.

There are other people who are just too busy with the day’s events to worry about rumors of unannounced products. Again, one of the the Myers-Briggs personality traits comes into play. Some people draw their values (and perhaps expectations) from outside events, not internally generated concepts.

As a result, people stand in line in the early morning hours to buy an Apple product that’s going to be outdated in a few weeks. So what? They just want an iPhone to give as a graduation present, and that’s what’s for sale. Or they want to ditch their tiresome RIZR and get a real smartphone. Right now, and the future is, well, the future.

It’s an amazing situation.