very simple

Yes, I actually got up super early this morning, got on line at the apple store in midtown, and got a new iphone.  I’d like to point to the fact that I never bought the first one as some sort of proof that I don’t immediately jump on every apple bandwagon that comes my way, but…who am I kidding.  In any event, there were massive problems at the apple store, which I got to experience firsthand.  In addition to the activation problems there was a big problem with the AT&T servers that allowed us to sign up for accounts, so I probably ended up spending over 2 hours in the store once I had gotten inside (that was after waiting on line for two hours).  It wasn’t unpleasant though.  I basically hung out with the apple nerds (ahem, i mean “geniuses”), who were stuck not being able to do anything because they couldn’t access the iTunes store.  They spent a non-insignificant amount of time trying to get me to go get their manager to let them download movies off of itunes so that we could at least “entertain” all of the people stuck in the store.  I didn’t do it, because I am a pill.  The guy behind me on the activation line though – seriously needed some stress management classes.  Little hint to those people who “need” their phone immediately?  Don’t decide to port your number on the first day of the friggin’ launch.  You’ll be much happier waiting a few days until they work the kinks out.  Anyway, I think the nerds liked me so much because I was extremely calm and patient about the whole thing.  It helped that I had nowhere else to be.

And then…

about 30 seconds after I walked out of the store, I decided to take the iphone out of the box because it was buzzing (most likely with ‘welcome’ texts from AT&T), and the phone slipped out of the box and landed face down on the cobblestone sidewalk of central park south and the screen cracked into about a gazillion pieces.  I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

But I calmly walked back to the store, got the security people to let me cut the line (after showing them the devastation), and the store people were very very very nice and very sorry about what happened, and exchanged the very damaged phone for a new one.  It took a little while, because we had to re-port all of my account information, and they said I was actually pretty lucky that it was launch day, because tomorrow they might not have been allowed to do this, but in the end, I’m home with a shiny, fully functional, non-broken iphone currently syncing with my computer.  And I’m keeping it in the soft-sided pouch that I used for my iPod Touch.

Tags: apple, good things, technology