Wow, what a day. My bad – I had a good original plan, that would’ve worked a treat, and miserably failed to stick to it – which turned today into and exhausting and frustrating experience.
My original plan was to get to bed relatively early last night and get out to a smallish, quiet-ish local AT&T store by around 5:30 this morning. Oops. Instead I started watching Leo Laporte’s excellent TWiT.TV ‘24 Hours of iPhone’ live broadcast, and enjoying it and watching some more and buggering around on Friendfeed, and generally not getting to bed. Then I kept hearing that store locations all round the US were quiet, not many people camping out, not that big a deal.
So somehow I ended up still awake messing around on the web around 4:00am – and finally got tired. Tried to grab ‘just a little’ shut eye, woke up later than I wanted, and ended up outside my chosen AT&T store at 6:45am.
Five fruitless hours later, I missed the cut for getting the new iPhone by two people. As best we could make out from AT&T staff who were pleasant and trying hard, but who were obviously forbidden from giving anything in the same neighborhood as a straight answer, was that they had been given around 40 phones. Despite this, they had happily watched something like 175 people spend 5 hours in the Texas heat – and waited until they had around 10 phones left to start letting anyone know things looked bad for serving the vast majority of those in the line. And believe me, tons of people were asking about the supply of phones / stock status in relation to size of the line since bright and early.
Thanks AT&T. Very impressive.
So several of us – gluttons for punishment or just plain iPhone nutters – went to the nearest Apple store in a major shopping mall. Apple staff generally seemed much better able to provide good answers during the day. They would not or could not ever give a specific number of phones they had available, but they did say with great confidence that they would have enough to cover everyone in line and that when that was in any doubt, they would inform folks in the line. This proved to be true.
Seven an a half hours after arriving at the mall, myself and several newfound pals / veterans of the AT&T line finally got our shiny new iPhone 3G babies. Like Brandon’s mine is a lovely white 16GB-er – and honestly no less lovely despite all the hours invested in getting her.
Lesson learned – should’ve listened to all those who suggested that Apple stores were the better way to go. Should’ve stuck to the original plan and got out earlier – I figure even half an hour earlier probably would’ve got me a phone at AT&T.
Well – very glad that’s done with, and activation in the store did work fine and fairly quickly for me. Knackered now – almost no energy to play with new apps 
That’s my iPhone 3G day experience – hope everybody else’s was *much* better …
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Wow patrick. Wow.
My brother just got home, and he was telling me about waiting in line for 6 hours, then they ran out of BLACK ones 3 people ahead of him. He didn’t want white, so he had to come home emtpy. I thought his story was bad, until I heard yours.
I’m sure there are many, many stories like these around the world – iDay 2.0 has become HellDay.
Wow Patrick! That was some adventure you got there. LOL. Well, the important thing is, you got the white beast!
I don’t have any interesting story to tell, since I am quite happy with my 1st gen. I am interested to see how it looks and feel thought, so I did go to the AT&T store after work, and checked out the demo unit. To be honest, I guess I’m not going to miss much. My feelings didn’t changed, and will definitely keep my 1st gen.
Oh, actually when I first got to the store, the guy was happy to take my name for the next batch of the iPhone 3G (yup, store was out). I guess, the store staff assumes everyone that were coming in were looking for the iPhone. Not a bad assumption really.
So his eyes rolled, when I say that I was actually looking for the LG VU (the truth mind you). Well, I guess it’s just not my day to have a new phone, as the LG VU was also out… Pfft.
Anywho – great stuff Patrick.
Cheers!
iamse7en – sorry to hear about your brother – coming back empty-handed sucks. And yeah, caught up on some RSS / forum reading last night and it really does seem like it was a hellish day for so many people. Glad it’s over would be a huge understatement
Aczon – LG VU = sacrilege!!! Not even a little tempted yet by the 3G / rounded back loveliness? Comon – get in line
What made you go with the white PJ?
Duh…
I’ve been installing app from the app store like crazy. Are these transferable to the 3G (if ever)?
Patrick didn’t have any choice, It’s probably the only one left, and didn’t really want to go back home empty handed.
Speaking of which, I was going to ask if you guys had a pact about getting white 3G, and didn’t include me in on the pact. dangit!!!
OT
Patrick, is there anyway you can format the comment box. Look like we’re typing in one line as it is. The mobile version is awesome though, so I wonder why it’s not formatting correctly on the desktop.
Both on FF and IE, so it’s not just me, right???
Brandon – I was initially leaning towards white right from the WWDC announcement day, then had kinda wavered towards black leading up to launch day. Final decision was combination of spur of the moment call plus quite a few reactions from long-time line dwellers who got theirs before me and came out saying the black turned them off when they tried it out in store, in terms of fingerprints, smudges etc.
Aczon – apps to 3G model = no worries – I installed lots on my V1 phone on Thursday, and just synced all the same ones to my new lovely hard-earned baby last night. On the comments thing, mine word wraps nicely in FF3 – need to look at this further and in other browsers – anyone else?
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