Did Apple's fanboy fever peak with Steve Jobs?

Apple Store employees, dressed in matching blue T-shirts, clapped and sang and made intermittent "woo!" cheers, as they walked past John H., who was waiting in line to buy the iPhone 5 in Atlanta last month. The 29-year-old, who had never before waited in one of Apple's I-need-the-product-immediately-so-I'm-willing-to-stand-here-for-hours lines, didn't look amused. About the time the sun was coming up, John leaned against a railing at Lenox Square mall and pretty much scowled at all the hoopla. "I didn't have anything better to do," he said of his decision to come to the mall and wait in line to buy the newest Apple smartphone. John, who asked that his last name not be used, had just come off of an overnight shift with an airline. "My girlfriend's out of town," he added. "I'm just hanging out." One year after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, that kind of indifference seems almost sacrilege when set against the history of Apple fanboy-dom that surrounds the company's product launches. And while it's true that that a woman in New York waited in line for eight days, braving rain, police, wrecks and everything else that would be horrible about sleeping outside in Manhattan for a week, the excitement for the iPhone 5 seemed less palpable than in the past, at least among the masses. The cause? That's anyone's guess. Maybe it's that this phone seems less exciting than its predecessors. Maybe it's harder for fans to drum up enthusiasm for Apple now that the once-scrappy underdog has become the world's richest and most powerful tech company. Or, more troubling for Apple loyalists, maybe some of the company's sparkle is fading with consumers now that Jobs, the design perfectionist, is no longer signing off on new products.