Did you spend $500 this weekend? I considered it… and then I played with the keyboard. And then I made a phone call.
Without a doubt though, the iPhone is one of the sweetest handheld devices I’ve ever touched, but I’ll pass on the first pass.
iPhone Day
Walking the iPhone line
I got off work at immediately at 5:00 p.m. on Friday and headed to the Apple Store in downtown SF. If you watched the movie above, you can see that the line wrapped three blocks around the whole store. Carl and I even got interviewed.
Apple employees running with water
With 10 minutes before the iPhone release, a stampede of Apple employees ran down the street handing out water. I thought that was pretty cool. Here is what the scene looked like at the entrance to the Apple store right at 6:00 p.m.:
And inside:
The line outside the store was gone by 7:30, and everybody got iPhones. Over at the AT&T store a few blocks away, they did run out of the 4GB model in an hour.
Despite its keyboard inaccuracy, and poor call quality, it’s an amazing product. Safari on wi-fi works well (if you can spell a website correctly), and the Photos application is exquisite. I didn’t really get to check out the iPod because I was in crowded space with no headphones, but I bet that’s real slick. That’s what I really want, a touch-screen iPod that doesn’t make calls.
Overall, Apple made a poor PR move. They announced the iPhone in January and exhausted its media worth since then. If they announced it a few weeks ago, it would have seen better reviews, but consumers will always have high expectations with that amount of hype. If I had an extra $500 laying around, I would definitely buy one though. I will wait until they release the next one though.
Do you want one?
One Comment
pure insanity. It was fun to interview people in line, though.