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Apple iPhone

Yesterday was a first for me… I’ve never waited in line for any great extent of time before, but when I drove by my local AT&T store on my way to work in the morning, I figured I might as well join the already growing line (already 3 people in line at 9am). I went to work and requested the day off, then joined the ranks outside the AT&T off Farrington Highway in Waipahu. The day went by suprisingly fast despite the scorching sun in the latter half of the day. After nearly 9.5 hours of waiting, I was 4th in line into the store and purchased the 8gb Apple iPhone. I had a great time with the guys in the line and even learned a little about restaurant franchising.

It all seems great, right? WRONG. I got home just to find out that AT&T dropped the ball big-time and the activation servers were backlogged for HOURS. Needless to say, I fell asleep last night with a completely unusable $600 brick. I left my computer on all night and heard a chime around 3am — my activation had finally gone through after a mere 8 hours of processing. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and began syncing up all my media. I went back to bed until 5:30am and then I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve been playing with the damn thing all day. It’s quite simply incredible.

There’s only a few small things I’ve noticed that I don’t like.

• The keyboard is EXCELLENT when typing sentences but for things like passwords and odd-named hawaiian words, it is heavily lacking.
• No Stereo Bluetooth support yet
• No Cut/Paste
• Currently no custom ringtone support
• YouTube isn’t “stateful”
• Gmail downloads EVERYTHING and the mail program ignores filters

For the most part, the device is simply incredible and I am happy to have gotten my hands on one. The word on the street is that most of the 1800 AT&T stores have sold out of the device, but that nearly all of the Apple Stores still have them in their inventory. I definitely am happy I made the jump from Verizon to AT&T.

iPhone

It’s going to be pure madness this Friday as hordes of people run to their nearest Apple/Cingular/AT&T stores to get their hands on the most anticipated piece of electronics of our generation. The iPhone quite possibly might be the defining product of the decade and my hope is that it sets in motion a wave of new Apple-created products in other market segments as well.

Here in Hawaii, my hope is that the hype won’t be as big as in other parts of the US. I will be heading to AT&T stores in the more rural areas of Oahu like Waianae, Waipahu, or perhaps even Mililani. I don’t plan on waiting long since most of the activation procedures will take place back at home on my computer with iTunes. I’ll let you all know how it turns out — but seriously, I cannot wait to shed myself of Verizon!

Apple iPhone

The Apple iPhone release is only a few weeks away now and I can’t wait to drop Verizon Wireless like a hot potato and jump on over to AT&T (used to be Cingular). For too long I’ve put up with ridiculously high mobile phone bills and not too much bang for the buck. Besides, with the release of the iPhone I’ll no longer have to carry around my Treo & my Nano.

All signs still point to an on-time product release in mid-to-late June. The iPhone comes in a 4GB and 8GB model. It’s soooo purrty.

From MacRumors:
As always, Apple didn’t reveal any information on new products, but was reportedly “confident the [iPhone] will ship on time with volumes to meet customer demand”.

The analysts expects “an innovative method of in-store activation and in-store displays for the iPhone, along with customer-friendly billing that could tie customers further into the Apple online store.”