Delayed gratification
By Brad on Jul 12, 2008 in Gadget Junkie, Not-so-funny | comments(2)
If you happened to watch my Twitter feed yesterday (that shows up under “What’s Brad doing?” at the top of the right sidebar), you would have seen that I ventured over to the Apple Store in Penn Square Mall yesterday over an early lunch over to see what was going on and if I might be able to get my hands on the new iPhone 3G. This video will give you some idea of what I found when I got there …
*
*
Now, to be honest, I was generally expecting a long line, but (foolishly) optimistically hoping for the best. What I found was just about the opposite of “best.” The line stretched from the Apple store all the way to Dillards (in the same wing of the mall near the west exit) and back around again to around to the stores across from the Apple Store. And the line was hardly moving at all… more than three hours after the store had opened. I knew the wait would be longer than I was willing to tackle, so I quickly abandoned that idea (because I hate waiting in long lines) and met Karla for lunch.
When I got back to the office, I was glad I didn’t bother. There were cascading delays on launch day with people having to wait even longer — much longer — than expected as the Apple activiation servers crashed and burned several extended times throughout the day and the iPhones couldn’t be activated or took a very long time to complete the process. I later heard that some people waited 4 to 6 hours (after the store had opened and the line began moving) before it was all said and done. Even as a diehard Apple fan and iPhone lover, there’s no way I would tolerate that kind of wait, and I didn’t and chose to wait another day. Delayed gratification — for me, for Karla and for the girls, who are inheriting our hand-me-down first-generation iPhones.
Now, Apple just didn’t plan this out very well, in my humble opinion Continued
