By:
The Dude on the Right
In case you were looking for my iPhone purchasing woes in a blog yesterday, I
have to apologize because I never got around to one. That’s because I was
playing with my new iPhone! Yup, I was only not cool for about 14 hours,
although, had I just gone to the Apple store on Friday evening after my
misgivings at two AT&T stores, I would have been cool sooner.
When I wrote
about
my inabilities to get an iPhone on the Friday launch date, the option to
sign up for AT&T’s "direct fulfillment program" didn’t seem like the best option
for me, even though I did have a comment for that blog saying I should have
signed up for it. My problem is my obsessive nature, and once I had it in my
mind I was going to buy one, signing up for a program that didn’t tell me when I
would actually get the phone wasn’t going to cut it. By the time Friday evening
came along I had done some homework, read many rumors (i.e. all stores selling
the phone would get another shipment on Saturday, although I have had no reason
to confirm if the AT&T stores did get a shipment on Saturday because I already
had my phone so didn’t need to check), but I had an Ace up my sleeve, at least I
hoped so, to getting an iPhone on Saturday, and that was there are five Apple
Stores within an hour of the Dude-Pad. That Ace also had a companion, and that
was the Apple website having
a section showing
iPhone availability for the next day.
After I wrote my blog on Friday night, lamenting on going to bed alone, I
planned my Saturday. It would simply start with waking up in the morning around
the same time I always do. I would shit, shower, and shave, and then head down
to my computer. I would go to the Apple website, check the availability area and
if it showed the iPhone would be available, for sale at 9AM as the website
pronounced, I would hop in the Dude-mobile, head to the closest Apple Store that
showed it had them, and hope for the best. I checked the website, it said my
closest store still had them, and so I skipped my morning paper reading and
headed to the mall. The tricky part was that I always call my Mom on Saturday
mornings, and if push came to shove, calling her would take precedent over
getting the phone. I end up at the Apple Store at about 8:50AM and there were
already about 25 people in front of me. The only hope of getting the phone
before having to call Mom is that unlike folks who were buying the phone at the
AT&T store, who might have needed some questions answered, everyone in front of
me had that look on their face of "give me an 8 gig, and oh yea, this case."
And as this blog is already starting to get too long let me just say a couple
of things to finish this up: First, the Apple folks had a way-impressive force
of getting the iPhone sold and out the door, even at 9:00 AM on a Saturday (I
can’t imagine what happened Friday evening there which I will discuss with Stu
Gotz tomorrow during our
"Stu & The Dude’s Weekend Wrap-Up" podcast). Second, with that force I had my
iPhone purchased at about 9:07 AM, made it back to the Dude-mobile in time to
call my Mom and tell her I bought one, to which she thought I was nuts. Third,
the phone is very cool, although I will admit it looks like they just got a lot
of functionality completed to get the phone out on time, with the rest of it to
come with later software upgrades (the phone doesn’t have real "Ringtone"
capability yet, nor, well, some other simple things my old RAZR had).
But yesterday, at about 9:07 AM, I was cool again, or maybe still just a
dork. And the day before I got a free bottle of water just for waiting for
an iPhone.
That’s it for this one!
I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!