So this is my birthday present from Steve (a bit late because of course it just came out). He left it up to me to go find one (he’s had a long week).
First attempt to get one I lined up for an hour at the local AT&T store, starting about about 5:45 (15 mins before they started selling the iphone). There were at least 40 people in front of me. and I was concerned they’d run out since I’d heard that morning that they had less than 100 (someone said another store had 50). The AT&T representative refused to say how many they had, which was frustrating. All she said was “You won’t be disappointed because either you’ll get one or you can order one right here and get it by ‘direct fulfillment’ – that means it will ship to your house before we get any more in our stores.
The line moved really slowly but at least there was good ‘line cameradie’. The person in front of me was very friendly. He told me he was from Arkansas and was married to an Australian (she wasn’t there) – that was interesting.
Sure enough, at 6:45, when there were about 10 people still ahead of me, they announced they’d sold out. I didn’t stay to do the direct fulfillment form because I was hoping to find one somewhere else much sooner than they could ship me one.
Second attempt On my way home I drove by the other local AT&T store just to check. They only had 7 left and a line of more than 7 people so there was no point waiting there.
If I was AT&T I would be frustrated that Apple didn’t ship more to the AT&T stores (Apple decided how many, I heard yesterday morning), because AT&T definitely could have sold more, at least in our local stores. And I noticed lots of other people immediately left the line like me as soon as they confirmed they were out of phones.
Third attempt I went home and called the closest Apple store who said they still had plenty and would have more in the morning if they ran out. That was encouraging. It was dinner time, so I called them again after dinner, at about 8:15 p.m. They said they still had plenty and no line, so I decided to drive out there. Ben and Steve’s Mom came with me and had fun playing with a demo while we were in the store. There was no wait to buy one there – they had more servers than people being helped. It only took a minute to buy it. I should have gone there in the first place!
Anyway I love it so far – it’s way cooler and better than my old phone!