me ‘n dr. jon waited on line for 3.5 hours…it went by pretty quickly. the line was pretty amusing. lots of people interviewing and surveying the folks in line. the line went around several corners. i’d guess we were about 250th in line out of about a thousand. just before it went on sale at 6pm, the apple store employees did a lap around the block to hype people up. and then the line started moving…pretty quickly! once we finally got into the store, it was a quick 10 mins in line, $1299 charged for 2 8gb phones and out the door.
activation is done at home. you connect it, and set up through iTunes. it took me about 10 mins to transfer my phone line and sync my calendars, contacts, mail accounts, photos, music, podcasts, tv shows, movies.
so after playing with it for about an hour now - i’m completely blown away. it works as smoothly and beautifully as advertised. it really does leapfrog the other phones on the market. it’s amazing. go buy two now.
this is perhaps the last picture to be taken from my old tmobile dash:
trying to steal some of the thunder back from AT&T/iPhone, Verizon actually issues a press release about the fact that they’ll be open until 9pm today. and they seem to think it’s a good thing that they have 18 models of music phones a consumer has to choose from.
i had the Motorola Q on Verizon….i’d rate it:
Network: A (EVDO *was* really fast)
Hardware: B- (the Q is a cool form-factor, but it felt cheaply made)
at 6pm local time, iphones go on sale - which means the east coasters will start getting them around 3pm PST. lines are forming around Apple Stores around the country. even the mayor of Philly is in line. it’s available at 164 or so Apple Stores (where you can get 2 per person) or about 1900 AT&T stores (where you get 1 per person). there’s even a handy Apple Store availability checker. wanna see what the line is like at the SF Apple Store? justin.tv, the kid with a webcam on 24×7, will be in line there.
2 final announcements around the phone today:
- AT&T confirmed that they’ve enhanced their EDGE network to almost twice the speed it used to be (up to 270kbps). the network speed was the one negative almost every reviewer mentioned.
- the phone is expected to be compatible with Microsoft Exchange, the main business email server.
as for me, well i may need to get in line to help dr. jon get one.
i had a feeling they weren’t going to leave employees out in the cold on what’s probably the biggest product launch in the company’s (and possibly the electronics industry’s) history. a free 8GB iPhone! =) but we may need to wait until the end of July to get it. =(
