iPhone 3G
I’m a big fan of the iPhone. You can do more on the iPhone than any other phone on the market today. I bought the original iPhone three days after the release. So when the launch of the iPhone 3G was announced, I was very happy.
Some friends and I decided to camp out at the local Apple store this last Thursday night to ensure we could buy one. We got to the store at around 12:00 AM, to our surprise no one was in line. To kill some time we decided to grab a movie at Monaco, we watched Hellboy 2. After the movie we went back to the Apple store to see if anyone was in line yet, and there were four people in line. At this point is was 2:00 AM with six hour’s to go before the store opened. (Through out the night employees of the Apple store would peak out the curtains to see how many people were in line.) So we chatted, browsed the internet, and generally did what we could to stay awake. Through out the night people trickled in two at a time. By 7:00 AM there were probably 60 people in line. So with one hour to go, there was a lot of activity inside and outside the store.
At 8:00 AM on the dot, the large glass doors entering into the Apple store opened up and out comes running 20 (cracked out) Apple employees screaming with joy. They give us a brief run down about how the process would work and start by letting the first ten in line in the store. I was number six in line so was in that first group of ten to enter the store.
By now it’s 8:15 AM and I’m in the hands of Amy (an Apple employee). She informs me that she will be with me the entire process. She starts by asking me what I want today and I let her now that I was getting two 16GB iPhones, one black and one white. So she says great, let me go grab the phones. She returned promptly and we begin the process of upgrading my old iPhone to the new iPhone 3G. She ask me a series of questions and I answer them. She often tells me that she has to go ask her manager questions as she had only been trained the process a few days before the launch. The process of getting my iPhone upgraded took roughly two hours. Now you’re probably thinking two hours is a typo, it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, Amy was very nice and seemed to know what she was doing. The process took so long because the “easy pay” hand held devices would continue to have “errors”. During this two hours period Amy and I had plenty of time to chat and I learned some interesting things about Apple and herself. One interesting thing she mentioned was that a training video they had watched said that each store should be processing around 100 iPhones an hour. I estimate that this store would only be processing 4.
After they get some problems sorted out and we get my phone upgraded we start on porting Ronda’s number over from Verizon to AT&T. This process probably took about an hour and a half. We were having the same issues with the “easy pay” devices.
With both phones now purchased and ready to get activated via iTunes, I find out that iTunes is down. With iTunes being down, I could not activate the phones for use. I was told that the Apple store had done everything they could do and to go home and continue to try iTunes throughout the day to activate the phones. I do believe is wasn’t till around 4:00 PM that iTunes was back up and letting us activate our phones. I was able to activate my phone in about two minutes. I then proceeded to help Ronda activate her phone and it also seemed to go smooth. She was able to make calls from the phone right after it was activated. She was however not able to receive calls until later that evening after we called AT&T. They informed us that the port did not completely take.
So with both iPhone working now, I calculate that the whole process, of waiting, buying, and activating the phones took twelve hours and thirty minutes.
Did you get an iPhone 3G yesterday or today? If so, please comment on how things went for you.
Apple Wireless Networking
Since the move I haven’t really spent much time messing with our home network. With me having a home office now I have had the need to improve our home network and make our wireless network stronger. I was using a Linksys router and it worked, but is has been a pain. I wanted something that was easy and trouble free. Since I am mainly using Macs now and I’ve seen how trouble free they are I decided to try Apple’s Airport Extreme Base Stations
It was very easy to setup and thus far I am very pleased with the performance. I know this might sound funny but, things just work better on Macs, even Mac wireless products. I can’t believe it took me so long to turn over to the Mac side…
Apple iPhone Credit
By now everyone has heard about the Apple iPhone Credit that Steve Jobs announced several days ago. Well, yesterday I went over to the local AT&T store to claim my $100 store credit and quickly found out that I should have read the details of the announcement. AT&T will only give rebates to buyers who purchased their iPhones between August 22, 2007 and September 4, 2007. If you purchased your phone before August 22, you can go online www.apple.com/iphone/storecredit and request your store credit. The process was very easy but I’m pissed that I can’t just turn around and fund my itunes account. WHY? It doesn’t make any sense to me. Oh, and btw, if you haven’t requested your $100 store you only have until November 30, 2007.
