What I Did To Get An iPhone

It has been a crazy 24 hours. Last night at 10:30 Sarah and I decided to swing by the AT&T store at the University mall to see if there was a line yet for the iPhone. Low and behold there was one already formed with around 60 people. I quickly gathered up some supplies (laptop and movies) and joined in. I didn’t really get any sleep, but I figured I was close enough to get an iPhone and then after work I could take a nap. After a long night of movies 8:00 began to approach. The AT&T employees would not divulge how many iPhones they had, but said they were working on some final things with corporate. At 8:00 they finally told us they only received 40 iPhones and 10 of them were the 16 gig model. I couldn’t believe it. I stayed all night and no iPhone. By 8:00 the line had roughly 200 people in it. Many were upset. They offered a direct fulfillment plan where you paid for the iPhone now and then they would get one shipped to you in a few days. Needless to say after camping out all night I wanted an iPhone today.

We decided to try the Apple store at the Gateway in Salt Lake. I called them up and they told us they had plenty and we were pretty much guaranteed one. We arrive at the store by 9:00 a.m. and there was a line of roughly 300 people. I had read Apple anticipated handling 100 people an hour, so I figured that wasn’t too bad. However, there were all sorts of problems with the AT&T activation process and iTunes was getting hammered as today was not only the launch in the U.S. but many other countries as well. I knew they had them though and we slowly crept up to the Apple Store entrance.

I finally had my iPhone paid and activated at 5:00 p.m. It was a great end, but boy was it a long day. I am severely sunburned,  but the Apple employees were nice in supplying us with water and snow cones throughout the day. After all the trouble I know I am going to make sure I take full advantage and enjoy the iPhone. I already have download several of the free apps on the app store, setup custom ringtones, and custom wallpapers. All the 3g network stuff is really cool. I used the GPS with google maps and a little blue dot appears which shows the car traveling on the road. Here are some pictures of the day. The first one shows the line at the AT&T store and the rest show how things progressed at the Apple store.