JesusPhone - The Second Coming

Let it be known that on July 11, 2008 in the wee hours of the morning, the second coming of the omnipresent JesusPhone became official.

The mass hysteria surrounding its resurrection reached its climax on Friday morning when the first of the new iPhone 3Gs were sold in Auckland, New Zealand.

It met its official US release at 8am Friday morning and the line of geeks at every Apple Store stretched for miles on end. The American workforce slowed to a mere crawl on Friday as millions lined up to get their hands on Apple's newest and greatest product. Little did everyone know that, when the hysteria finally hit critical mass and the doors to every Apple Store and AT&T Store opened nationwide, their ordeal had only just begun.

What major weblogs dubbed the iPocalypse was the debacle at every Apple Store and AT&T location wherein customers who attempted to activate their new iPhones overloaded Apple's servers and crashed the system. Apple Stores across the country slowed to a crawl with hundreds of customers waiting in line outside their doors. The official word from AT&T seemed to point the finger at Apple.

We have had reports that customers attempting to download new iTunes 7.7 software to their new iPhone may get an error message saying "page not found." We have reported this issue to Apple. While Apple works to resolve this issue, we are asking customers to sync their newly activated phone later at home.

Early Friday morning, my mother became one of the lucky few who experienced little to no problems purchasing and activating a brand new iPhone 3G. After waiting in line for nearly 3 hours, she had a choice between a white 16 Gig model and a black 8 Gig model. My sister chose to upgrade to the 8 Gig black model, but I was unsure of the choice. Since I did not want to settle for an 8 Gig model and Bree was set on purchasing the white model, I told my mother to buy the white in hopes that Bree would be able to purchase a 16 Gig black phone and we could switch.

However, the story was not the same for Bree and her mother. Their ordeal began at 10:30 am when Bree's mother arrived at the Apple Store and stood in the nearly 300 person line. Now, we all know the iPhones went on sale at 8am and she was slightly late in arriving, but with an estimated 750-1000 iPhones in stock at every Apple Store nationwide there was no threat of them running out of stock. The problems began nearly immediately after her arrival, and she would not see the inside of the Apple Store for many hours.

After getting out of work, Bree joined her mother in line in order for them to both purchase the phones and alleviate some of the burden. They were both finally inside the store at around 8:30 pm, nearly 10 hours after originally getting in the line. After finally reaching the front of the line within the store itself, they triumphantly purchased their iPhones at around 10:00 pm after a nearly 12 hour ordeal. Bree and I were able to switch SIM cards and have the colors we originally desired. The wait may have been long, but it has not diminished the excitement of finally having the latest and greatest phone in the world. We are to grateful to our mothers!