iPhone 3G Activation Woes
I got to the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. around 7:30am on Friday, 11 July, which was only about a half an hour before the store opened. Sure enough, there was a line. It didn’t look that bad, so I walked to the end of it only to be informed that it continued past the hospital and across the other street.
Around 8am the line started moving briskly, and many many more people (700-800 according to Apple’s spotters) lined up behind me.
By 9:30am I’d halved my distance to the Apple store, and by a little after 10am I was leaning up against the wall on the Huron side of the store, figuring I’d soon be on my way with a new iPhone.
The line stayed there for a half an hour, and just as I was about to give up it started moving again (a little) so I waited. Apple brought us bottles of vitamin water and California Pizza Kitchen was taking orders and delivering pizza to the line. By 11am I was in the store (and the air conditioning). The line snaked around the perimeter of the store and up the stairs to the “genius bar” stations that were temporarily phone activation stations. My newfound line friends and I counted people leaving with phones like you’d count thunderclaps - about one person leaving the store with a phone every ten minutes or so. Most of my moving forward in line was due to attrition - people getting out of line and leaving, not people leaving the store with activated iPhones.
When I got to the stairs I figured I was home free, so when the Apple Store manager told us “Great news, folks, activations are speeding up, and there’s only about 300 people in line ahead of you, so it should only be a couple more hours!” I took off, finally getting a cab into work about four hours after first getting in line.
Ugh.
Saturday afternoon I tried again. There was still a line, but it was much, much shorter. I decided to wait, and an hour later, I was able to finally get an iPhone 3G (although Apple couldn’t set up my new 3G phone with the same number as my previous iPhone account, so for now I’m carrying two iPhones - the first-generation with my old phone number and the new 3G with a new temporary number.
When Apple launched the first iPhone last year they revolutionized the mobile phone activation experience by allowing people to buy online or in a store and activate at home. Because of Apple’s new subsidy program with AT&T they’re making sure that people activate in-store to prevent people from unlocking their phones and using them with another carrier. Because of AT&T’s short-sightedness, to prevent the minority from unlocking their phones, they’re making everyone suffer.
Apple used to protect their customers from this sort of thing. Whatever happened to “it just works”?
When the first iPhone launched Apple bragged about how they were able to coerce AT&T into letting people activate at home. The process was painless and people were in and out of the store in mere minutes. By comparison, this year the iPhone purchasing experience was painful and awkward.
Granted, I could have waited a week and avoided most of the unpleasantness, but considering the high-profile of this product launch I would have thought that all involved would be better prepared.
