Holy Shit.
Mother of God.
What do you say? Really? I arrived at the Manhattan Village Mall this morning to anticipate a long line waiting for the iPhone 3G to be sold at the Apple Store inside the Mall. Little did I know that I would spend the next 8+ hours waiting in line under a grueling sun to get into the Apple store to buy the phone.
I arrived at 0638 and there was already a long line that snaked around the side of the mall and down around the Macy's store across the parking lot from the theaters. Not long after I arrived, an Apple store employee came out to count people and hand out pamphlets. He informed me that I was # 227 in line. He did *not* tell me how long a wait I could anticipate.
So I waited and waited and waited and waited. Inching along a few feet every 15 minutes or so. Around 1130 or so, my wife came by mall and brought me some food and a bottle of water. The Apple store people ahd been coming around with water, coffee and Popsicles, also.
As long as the line was, it was made a little more bearable by the guy in front of me who turned out to be an old-school Mac programmer and kept me entertained with stories of the bad old days of programming for the 128K original Mac.
Eventually, around 1345, we had made it to the front doors of the mall and then inside to the relative coolness and comfort of the mall, just outside the Apple store. After another 15 minute wait outside the Apple store, I was eventually allowed inside the store to actually buy the phone.
Here is where I found out WHY I had to wait in line 8 plus hours.
It was taking an average of 25 to 30 minutes PER PHONE SOLD to process each sale due to problems with the ITunes activation servers. Also adding to the delays was the fact that AT&T was having issues also with their servers.
As it was, when I attempted to actually pay for the iPhone 3G, the nice Apple Genius that was helping me told me that he could not sell me a phone because I worked for a corporation that had a discount in place and as such, I needed to go to an AT&T Store to purchase my iPhone 3G.
This after waiting in line over 8 hours. Well, that was not going to happen, so I told the guy to call AT&T and do whatever he needed to do to process my transaction. He did just that and AT&T suspended my discount in order to allow his POS terminal to process my iPhone 3G sale.
So this is the story of the day I was christianed as a true Apple Fan Boy by waiting 8+ hours in line to pay $300 for a cellular phone from Apple . Mind you, this from a guy that had a perfectly good working 8GB iPhone 1.0 in his pocket that he paid $600 for just 10 months earlier in September of 2007.
And you know what? After all was said and done, I had a good time and I will do it again next year when the iPhone 3.0 is released. It's kinda of cool knowing that I am one of the few hundred people in all of Southern California (really, the greater Los Angeles Metro are) to get his hands on an iPhone 3G.
I am SUCH a GEEK. :=)
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