iPhone Lines – One Week Later

This will probably only interest a small minority, but that’s what blogging’s all about right?

I’ve been planning on getting the 3G iPhone for pretty much the past year, but I wasn’t enthusiastic enough to wait in line last Friday to get one. Last year, when the first generation was released, a co-worker waited a little less than a week to go get one at the Apple store at The Domain and walked right in and out with one. I was hoping that I’d be able to do the same.

No such luck.

I’ve been watching the iPhone availability page over the past week and both Barton Creek and The Domain have shown no stock. I finally decided to call The Domain store this morning at 10am. Turns out, they are, in fact, getting phones on most days, it’s just that people are lining up as soon as they’re open and they’re selling out of each day’s stock by the end of the day. So, if you really want one anytime soon, it appears you’re going to have to do pretty much the same thing that you had to do on the first day.

A few more tips:

• Be prepared to wait. I was there for 3 hours today. One of the employees estimated a 1 hour 45 minute wait when I arrived. Yeah. They did seem to be good about making sure that there were enough phones for those in line.
• The holdup appears to be people switching from another carrier. One man was being helped for a full hour and three others were there for a half an hour. I’m an existing AT&T customer. It took them 10 minutes to check me out.
• Over the three hours I was there, there were between 2 and 5 Apple employees actively setting people up with phones. It really should be 5 all the time. I realize they need breaks, but Apple needs to staff up.
• They could probably streamline some of the process. The employee has to ask you which model you want and then shuffle back to the back room to get the phone and come back. They’re using up a few minutes with each customer to do this. It’s probably to avoid theft, but this adds up.
• My guess is that you might have a faster experience at an AT&T store but I hear that their stock is much lower. That’s all purely anecdotal, so please correct me in the comments if you’ve had a different experience.

How do I like the phone so far? It’s pretty fscking amazing. I giggled like a little girl the first time I controlled my iTunes library on my PC from the phone. I sense an Airport Express purchase in the near future. The App Store is like crack. I downloaded several apps, including Shazam, which can identify a song you’re listening to on the radio and then link you to purchase it in iTunes. Unbelieveable.