I knew this going into it.  I wish Apple had picked T-Mobile or someone who actually gives a shit about their customers. 

Great experience:

• Wait in line for six hours.
• Get iPhone.
• Woot.
• Go home.
• “Activate” on iTunes.  (Which presumably was done to take people out of the equation and make it faster.)
• Get through activation.
• Get e-mail – “it will take 24 hours to transfer your number”
• Get another e-mail cannot activate.
• Call AT&T – “WTF?”
• “It takes time to transfer a number.”
• “No it doesn’t, last time I did this it took less than 15 minutes.”
• “Oh, it’s the high volume of transfers.”
• (Thought bubble): Bullshit, it’s fucking computers.
• “Oh really?  Well why can’t I just activate my phone while I wait?”
• “You can’t activate it until the tranfer.”
• “Really? That’s not what the FAQ/website say.”
• “Oh, uhm, it can take up to 24 hours.”
• “What if I want a new number?”
• “That takes up to 6 hours.”
• (Thought bubble): WTF?  If I just went into any wireless store on the planet and bought a phone service would be on with a new number INSTANTLY.  Does iPhone somehow make provisioning harder?
• Click.

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!  If people are waiting in line to buy your product, you shouldn’t shaft them at the end. 

Really disappointing.

Oh and you can’t use the phone in this state so I can’t even start configuring it or doing anyhting.  VERY NICE.

I swore I would never use AT&T again.  iPhone came out.  Apple forces me to use AT&T.  I get the shaft I knew would come.

They seem very positive.

WSJ: Testing Out the iPhone (Mossberg)

NYT:  The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype  (Pogue)

So this article:

When You’ve Got To Go, Go To Mizpee.com

Is probably the weirdest thing I’ve seen in Web 2.0 land.  Techcrunch gives coverage to a lot of out there ideas, but I’m with the commentors on this one – it might mean the beginning of the end for web 2.0. 

Crazy.

Interesting iPhone news today.  They announced the plans.

• $59.95 for 450 minutes
• $79.95 for 900 minutes
• $99.95 for 1,350 minutes

They have unlimited data and mobile-to-mobiling calling.  They also have a $36 activation fee and are limited to 200 SMS messages.  (Unlimited data, but 200 SMS messages?  That seems dumb, but hey.)

Anyway, if they are like other AT&T Rate Plans they should also have free nights and weekends. 

Comparing these rate plans to the standard ones on the AT&T website seems to indicate that the unlimited data / web is basically $19.95/month.

Finally, it also looks like you can activate your iPhone from iTunes.  So you buying the phone and turning it on are separate.  So the lines should clear out fast.  I was expecting some crazy wait while they tried to turn my phone on.  This will also help the resellers who want to flip them.  Before this announcement that wasn’t really an option since I didn’ t know how activation would work.  Now it might be an option.

So from my little bit of research on EDGE, it seems like it tops out at about 384kbps and averages more like 150ish.  That’s not really all that slow.  I mean yeah a few mbps would be better.  But speed really isn’t that important for e-mail and well the web…

I have a Motorola Q on Verizon right now.  And my web experience has been consistently horrible.  Pages don’t load, it’s slow, etc.  It’s basically worthless.  E-mail works nice (Outlook is pretty good on Windows Mobile and it talks to my Exchange server pretty well).  But the web, not so much.  I tried to look up an NBA finals basketball score a few weeks ago.  Verizon’s little portal thing sucks.  ESPN won’t load.  Etc.

So I have a lot of confidence in Steve Jobs and Apple to get the experience right.  And frankly I’d rather have a browser that renders ESPN correctly running at 200kbps than one that’s running 10 times faster but can’t render the page.  One of those is useful, the other is not.

Apple just launched this new video about the iPhone.  Ironically it crashes on Vista and I have yet to get it to play on my XP machine.  WTF.  Actually, to be clear – when I say “crases on Vista” I mean I get a blue screen of death.  It’s happened everytime I’ve tried.  Pretty weird. 

I’m not surprised about Vista I’ve had to blow up Quicktime a few times because it keeps taking over everything.  It’s annoying.  I really want to see it.  I’m going to try downloading Quicktime… again.

Ok, this afternoon I scouted out a few locations for next Friday.  I checked out an Apple Store and an AT&T Store.  I like these choices because they are near each other.  No one seemed to know much.  The guy I talked to at the AT&T Store said a couple of people had asked about camping out.  I’m not that crazy, but it is interesting.  The Apple Store has Wi-Fi, so if I hang out there I can at least work / browse the web / blog more effectively.  At least until my battery died – I didn’t see any power outlets outside the store.  Doh.

Anyway, if they haven’t put together a line strategy yet there may be problems.  Like are they going to give numbers?   How does one leave to use the facilities?  I don’t think I have someone willing to hang out all day with me.  That would make things easier. 

Right now I’m leaning towards waiting at the Apple Store. 

I have two things I’m curious about with regards to the iPhone and what will happen after release:

• Why isn’t Flash on it?  How long will it be before Flash is on it?  Is this some licensing issue (Apple doesn’t want to pay Adobe) or a technical issue (seems like if the iPhone is running Mac OS X this wouldn’t be the case)?
• How long will it take someone to hack World of Warcraft to work on it?  It’s got 8 GB, if you don’t care about music you might be able to get WoW to run on it.  WoWPhone or the WoW iPhone….. The iPhone is 320×480 resolution and the lowest WoW setting I have is 800×600 – so that may be an issue. 

See iPhone Tech Specs for more info – they say it is running Mac OS X there.

Well it’s a week and a half away.  I’ve made the decision – I’m going to wait in line for it.  Here is why:

• Verizon is really pissing me off.  My Q keeps running out of battery life in my house (bad signal) and I get bad reception at home and work.  No guarantee AT&T will be better, but I doubt it could be much worse.
• I have an abnormally high addiction to shiny new gadgets of the technical variety.  I can’t help it.
• I am really curious to see how the interface works – I think it could be a big step forward.  And well, like bullet 2 I just want to know and must have it.
• I want to test my new game on it….. vaguely legitimate 😉
• I have no self control on this issue.

So there you have it.  I’m plotting my strategy, which really consists of:

• When do I show up?
• Which store (2 Apple Stores in Austin or do I go for an AT&T store) do I go to?

I’ll keep you informed.

I think there are some pros and cons to each.  I know a ton of people that just stay logged into ventrilo (a common voice server) all day.   I’m not that enamored with the voice chat, but it is definitely useful in World of Warcraft.  Certainly for action and socialization, voice chat is pretty cool.  Text chat is kind of a nice way to retain anonymity and casualness.  Anyway, this article from wired.com is pretty interesting:

Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood on WoW