Apple's new iPhone 3G loses its connection to the Mother Ship;
People in line for long-awaited device in for day, long & weighted
| by Joe Leo, Columnist |
continued... from: previous page
Because Apple required activation in-store, the number of people that could be attended to was very limited. And because they were being attended to, the lines outside stayed put. At 9:08a, some of the same people that had initially come in were still seated at the Genius Bar, or off to the side elsewhere, waiting for their phones to be activated.
This pattern of 20 in to be helped while another 20 waited in line, would be the one held during the two hours we were there, with only five groups (about 100) being served. Even without the activation problems that day, it would still have translated to a long day for everyone, anyway.
When we left the store at 10:00a, 301 people were standing in line outside (yes, we counted) from the storefront to the end of the block, wrapping halfway onto the next block. Earlier that morning, the line continued well onto the opposite side of the block parallel to the Apple Store.
At 10:15a, checking the nearest AT&T store to this Apple Store, there were 40 or so people waiting in line at the AT&T located at the corner of 3rd and Market Street in San Francisco.
Later that evening, a little more than 12 hours after the iPhone 3G's launch, we stopped by the Apple Store on Bay Street in Emeryville, right across the bay from San Francisco, in order to test drive the new iPhone for ourselves, thinking the lines would no longer be there.
In front of the store was a line just as long as the one we found earlier that day at AT&T.
(There was no line at the AT&T store across the street to the right from this Apple Store since it had already closed for the night-- the place where we began our coverage last year due to the nature of its proximity to an Apple Store, a "few feet" away).
THE 11TH HOUR (ALMOST): 12 hours after the iPhone 3G launch, customers are still standing in line at this smaller Apple Store on Bay Street in Emeryville, CA (across the bay from San Francisco).
In fact, there were reports of substantial number of people still in line for an iPhone over the weekend as Philip Michaels of iPhone Central (no relation to Power | 'Book Central), a Macworld site, reported Sunday.
"If you put off buying an iPhone 3G on the day Apple released the new device, you managed to avoid many of the activation woes that plagued early adopters on Friday. That's the good news. The bad news? You may still have to deal with crowds, even two days after..."
On Friday, despite the bad luck that Apple had which cast a dark cloud on its big day, the reason for the activation's failures being a result of the sheer numbers of people trying to do just that--activate their iPhone via iTunes software--should only show how iconic the iPhone is, and what a fan following Apple has garnered.
Of the 25 people we surveyed who were all people in the first group ushered in to the Apple Store on Friday morning, 72% of them were buying their second iPhone, upgrading from the iPhone to the iPhone 3G. The rest were buying one for the first time.
The only question to ask now is which phone E.T. would choose today to "phone home" back to the mother ship, an iPhone 3G or one of its "iPhone killer" competitors? The one he chooses would end all debates, once and for all.
We'll place our bets that E.T.'s fingers are right on the iPhone 3G.