**A Webbed Footprint Special Report**
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Friday, July 11 – 5:00pm
After spending most of the day convincing myself that I was not going to succumb to the widespread iPhone mania, my willpower finally cracked. Before I knew what was happening, I told my roommate I’d be back in an hour and headed out the door. My plan was simple: I’d walk to the quiet, unassuming AT&T store nearby and avoid all the hoopla at the Apple stores in Union Square and the Marina. It was going to be brilliant. It was going to be mine, all mine.
I walked briskly. After six or seven blocks I wondered if I had passed the store, so I pulled out my first generation iPhone and waited for the EDGE network to load the map. As I stood and watched the spinning wheel grind its gears at 48 kilobytes per second, I thought about how much better my life would be when I could finally shave 5 to 12 seconds off the wait time for these darn pages to load. I barely noticed the Google map finally flicker to life. Yes, I thought. I’m on the right track.
Two blocks later, I strolled into the store with a swagger and walked right up to one of the many clerks wearing a black t-shirt that read: “It’s here…the iPhone 3G.”
“Can I help you?”
“Yes,” I said pointing to the young man’s chest. “I’d like one of those 3G’s, please.”
He laughed at me in the way one might laugh at a child who announces loudly to a room full of adults that he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up so that he can fly to Jupiter.
“Riiiight,” he said in his best attempt to not sound condescending. He might as well have patted me on the head. “Unfortunately, we’re all out of those today. But you can come back tomorrow and we’ll have some more.”
“How many more?”
“Well…” he said as his eyes grew distant. “I can’t say exactly, but it will be more than fifty and less than a hundred.”
His coyness irked me, but I managed to ask one final question under the guise of politeness: “What time do you open?”
“Ten o’clock,” he replied. “But I’d get here early because there’s probably going to be a line.”
I pretended to ignore him and turned for the door.
Saturday, July 12 – 9:47am
I had debated over cereal and coffee whether I would actually stand in line for it. In the shower later, I decided that I would just casually stroll by and see how crazy the scene was. And yet, as I grabbed my jacket and headed out the door I found myself announcing to the room, “I’m coming back with an iPhone.”
“You might want to bring a magazine or something,” my roommate suggested. “Just in case you have to wait in line.”
“That’s why I have this,” I said, waving my first generation iPhone at her.
Moments later I was out the door. Again, I walked briskly, but this time not out of enthusiasm. I really didn’t want to stand in line. To my way of thinking, being an early adopter of the iPhone should be like going out to a swanky party on Saturday night and looking good. See, I don’t care if you’re a model or an actor or just an average Shmoe --nobody wants to see all the work that goes into looking good. They just want to see the final product. With the iPhone, standing in line is the equivalent of plucking your eyebrows, picking the corns off your toes, exfoliating, trimming your nose hairs, wearing Crest white strips for an hour, and then finally sucking in your gut to squeeze into that pair of pants that used to fit back in the day when you were actually in shape. It takes all the magic out of it.
Instead, you want to give the impression that the beautiful black and silver microcomputer fell out of the sky and into your waiting hand. You want to pull it out of your pocket in a crowded room and say, “Oh, this old thing? Well, you know, Steve [Jobs] asked me to test drive it back when it was in Beta testing. I just decided not to upgrade to the 16GB model out of nostalgia.”
Suffice it to say, I was practically jogging by the time I got to Geary.
10:05am
Two blocks away, and though I couldn’t see the line, per se, I did detect an unusual gathering of people on the sidewalk ahead. I stopped to grab a copy of the Onion from the newsstand—not because I was in the mood for humorous news parody and social commentary, but so I could hide my face in case anyone I knew happened to pass by. I began to get the sickening feeling that I would be standing in line after all.
10:07am
Yes, it was quite a line. I started counting off in two’s as I passed by. Some had brought their own lawn chairs. Others drank coffee and chatted up their neighbors, while still others touched and tapped away at their first generation iPhones. There was something grotesque about this, kind of like playing fetch with Old Yeller before taking him behind the barn to put him down. I don’t know. It just bothered me.
10:10am
…78…80…82…84…86 people ahead of me in line. The words of the store clerk echoed in my mind. Being number 87 was precariously close to being one hundred, which was precariously close to being S.O.L. The worst part was being at the very end of the line. I can barely describe how relieved I was when 88 and 89 finally approached. But after only a few minutes, 88 muttered to 89 about how he heard they were only letting four people in the store at a time, and how it was taking half an hour to activate each phone. For a moment, I thought he was just trying to dishearten the rest of us so they could move ahead.
“Hell with it,” 89 said after a moment’s consideration. “Let’s get out of here.”
And so, to my dismay, I was at the end of the line again.
10:25am
I was halfway through my paper when a bright faced sales associate named Jeremy came out to greet those of us towards the end of the line. He offered us a one page stat sheet about the 3G touting its features and benefits—as though we’d really be standing in this line if we didn’t already have an inclination that it was the shiz-nit.
A new 88 and 89 have arrived with their daughter, 90, who is playing a never ending game of paper/rock/scissors with dear old dad (“one-two-three! Hahaha. one-two-three! Hahaha. one-two-three!”). Though it sounded like they could go all day, the mother finally said something about an appointment at 11:30, gathered up the daughter’s belongings, and grabbed her hand as they headed out of line.
“Okay, see you later,” 88 said.
The line shifted forward another two paces, and a new 89 and 90 took their place.
10:55am
Having emailed several updates to Sansserif with pictures of the line and my rants about the tribulations of an early adopter, I returned to reading my paper (though very slowly so that I wouldn’t finish too quickly). Jeremy has returned. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him silently counting the remaining crowd, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he passed by me. He stopped around 110 and announced the bad news. They’d have to come back tomorrow, or get on the waiting list for sometime next week.
“You mean, I made it?” 109 exclaimed as though she had won the lottery.
“It looks like it,” Jeremy said. There was something in his voice that I interpreted as being not very reassuring—a hesitancy, perhaps—but the woman nonetheless pumped her fist in a subdued and respectful ceremony of joy.
11:01am
Number 88 answering a call on his flip-up clamshell phone:
"Well, no, I'm still standing in line. Honey... Honey... There's only about ten people ahead of me. Well, Honey... Honey... Look, even if I leave right now, I won't make it by 11:30."
He closed his phone with a slow snap. No goodbye's, or love-you-too's were uttered. He stood perfectly still for a moment, and I could sense my linemates shifting their attention to him. 86 was peering out of the corner of her eyes. 91 and 92 stopped their conversation in mid-sentence and waited. A moment later, 88 sighed heavily and left the line, speedwalking down the sidewalk and around the corner.
The line shifted another pace behind me.
11:22am
After carefully examining the showtimes of movies I had no intention of seeing, I finally gave up on the paper and tucked it in my back pocket. I focused my attention now on peering through the window and sizing up the situation. All was very orderly, but the nervous energy was palpable.
Suddenly a car pulled up to the curb. Two curly haired kids jumped out, plopped a couple of quarters in the meter, and headed for the entrance. Jeremy extended his clipboard to stop them and gave them the bad news. I’m not sure if they had pretended not to notice the line outside the door or if, in their early adopter exuberance, the iPhone had given them tunnel vision to the point where they had zoned everything else out. It’s been known to do that from time to time.
Dejected, they returned to their car and drove off. Many of those who’d stood in line for over an hour shook their heads in amusement, and I began to understand full extent of my naiveté the day before. Theirs had already cost them fifty cents.
11:35am
Jeremy has returned with more bad news. There’s only four black 8GB iPhones left. Everyone else will have to settle for the white 16GB model. We began eyeing each other suspiciously. All was quiet until…
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11:41am
I made my way to the counter and spoke with the very same clerk as before. I don’t know if he recognized me, but I wasn’t in the mood to make small talk. I dropped my fist generation iPhone on the counter and told him what I wanted. He asked for my digits and got the transfer account set up for me.
“And how many text messages would you like? You can have two hundred, fifteen hundred, or unlimited.”
“Text messages?” I wondered out loud why anyone would pay for unlimited text messages on a phone that sends emails, but then I told him to just sign me up for two hundred. We were wasting valuable time.
He went to the back room, and moments later came back with a little black box.
“You’re lucky,” he said waving it to me. “You got the last one.”
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Friday, July 11 – 5:00pm
After spending most of the day convincing myself that I was not going to succumb to the widespread iPhone mania, my willpower finally cracked. Before I knew what was happening, I told my roommate I’d be back in an hour and headed out the door. My plan was simple: I’d walk to the quiet, unassuming AT&T store nearby and avoid all the hoopla at the Apple stores in Union Square and the Marina. It was going to be brilliant. It was going to be mine, all mine.
I walked briskly. After six or seven blocks I wondered if I had passed the store, so I pulled out my first generation iPhone and waited for the EDGE network to load the map. As I stood and watched the spinning wheel grind its gears at 48 kilobytes per second, I thought about how much better my life would be when I could finally shave 5 to 12 seconds off the wait time for these darn pages to load. I barely noticed the Google map finally flicker to life. Yes, I thought. I’m on the right track.
Two blocks later, I strolled into the store with a swagger and walked right up to one of the many clerks wearing a black t-shirt that read: “It’s here…the iPhone 3G.”
“Can I help you?”
“Yes,” I said pointing to the young man’s chest. “I’d like one of those 3G’s, please.”
He laughed at me in the way one might laugh at a child who announces loudly to a room full of adults that he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up so that he can fly to Jupiter.
“Riiiight,” he said in his best attempt to not sound condescending. He might as well have patted me on the head. “Unfortunately, we’re all out of those today. But you can come back tomorrow and we’ll have some more.”
“How many more?”
“Well…” he said as his eyes grew distant. “I can’t say exactly, but it will be more than fifty and less than a hundred.”
His coyness irked me, but I managed to ask one final question under the guise of politeness: “What time do you open?”
“Ten o’clock,” he replied. “But I’d get here early because there’s probably going to be a line.”
I pretended to ignore him and turned for the door.
Saturday, July 12 – 9:47am
I had debated over cereal and coffee whether I would actually stand in line for it. In the shower later, I decided that I would just casually stroll by and see how crazy the scene was. And yet, as I grabbed my jacket and headed out the door I found myself announcing to the room, “I’m coming back with an iPhone.”
“You might want to bring a magazine or something,” my roommate suggested. “Just in case you have to wait in line.”
“That’s why I have this,” I said, waving my first generation iPhone at her.
Moments later I was out the door. Again, I walked briskly, but this time not out of enthusiasm. I really didn’t want to stand in line. To my way of thinking, being an early adopter of the iPhone should be like going out to a swanky party on Saturday night and looking good. See, I don’t care if you’re a model or an actor or just an average Shmoe --nobody wants to see all the work that goes into looking good. They just want to see the final product. With the iPhone, standing in line is the equivalent of plucking your eyebrows, picking the corns off your toes, exfoliating, trimming your nose hairs, wearing Crest white strips for an hour, and then finally sucking in your gut to squeeze into that pair of pants that used to fit back in the day when you were actually in shape. It takes all the magic out of it.
Instead, you want to give the impression that the beautiful black and silver microcomputer fell out of the sky and into your waiting hand. You want to pull it out of your pocket in a crowded room and say, “Oh, this old thing? Well, you know, Steve [Jobs] asked me to test drive it back when it was in Beta testing. I just decided not to upgrade to the 16GB model out of nostalgia.”
Suffice it to say, I was practically jogging by the time I got to Geary.
10:05am
Two blocks away, and though I couldn’t see the line, per se, I did detect an unusual gathering of people on the sidewalk ahead. I stopped to grab a copy of the Onion from the newsstand—not because I was in the mood for humorous news parody and social commentary, but so I could hide my face in case anyone I knew happened to pass by. I began to get the sickening feeling that I would be standing in line after all.
10:07am
Yes, it was quite a line. I started counting off in two’s as I passed by. Some had brought their own lawn chairs. Others drank coffee and chatted up their neighbors, while still others touched and tapped away at their first generation iPhones. There was something grotesque about this, kind of like playing fetch with Old Yeller before taking him behind the barn to put him down. I don’t know. It just bothered me.
10:10am
…78…80…82…84…86 people ahead of me in line. The words of the store clerk echoed in my mind. Being number 87 was precariously close to being one hundred, which was precariously close to being S.O.L. The worst part was being at the very end of the line. I can barely describe how relieved I was when 88 and 89 finally approached. But after only a few minutes, 88 muttered to 89 about how he heard they were only letting four people in the store at a time, and how it was taking half an hour to activate each phone. For a moment, I thought he was just trying to dishearten the rest of us so they could move ahead.
“Hell with it,” 89 said after a moment’s consideration. “Let’s get out of here.”
And so, to my dismay, I was at the end of the line again.
10:25am
I was halfway through my paper when a bright faced sales associate named Jeremy came out to greet those of us towards the end of the line. He offered us a one page stat sheet about the 3G touting its features and benefits—as though we’d really be standing in this line if we didn’t already have an inclination that it was the shiz-nit.
A new 88 and 89 have arrived with their daughter, 90, who is playing a never ending game of paper/rock/scissors with dear old dad (“one-two-three! Hahaha. one-two-three! Hahaha. one-two-three!”). Though it sounded like they could go all day, the mother finally said something about an appointment at 11:30, gathered up the daughter’s belongings, and grabbed her hand as they headed out of line.
“Okay, see you later,” 88 said.
The line shifted forward another two paces, and a new 89 and 90 took their place.
10:55am
Having emailed several updates to Sansserif with pictures of the line and my rants about the tribulations of an early adopter, I returned to reading my paper (though very slowly so that I wouldn’t finish too quickly). Jeremy has returned. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him silently counting the remaining crowd, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he passed by me. He stopped around 110 and announced the bad news. They’d have to come back tomorrow, or get on the waiting list for sometime next week.
“You mean, I made it?” 109 exclaimed as though she had won the lottery.
“It looks like it,” Jeremy said. There was something in his voice that I interpreted as being not very reassuring—a hesitancy, perhaps—but the woman nonetheless pumped her fist in a subdued and respectful ceremony of joy.
11:01am
Number 88 answering a call on his flip-up clamshell phone:
"Well, no, I'm still standing in line. Honey... Honey... There's only about ten people ahead of me. Well, Honey... Honey... Look, even if I leave right now, I won't make it by 11:30."
He closed his phone with a slow snap. No goodbye's, or love-you-too's were uttered. He stood perfectly still for a moment, and I could sense my linemates shifting their attention to him. 86 was peering out of the corner of her eyes. 91 and 92 stopped their conversation in mid-sentence and waited. A moment later, 88 sighed heavily and left the line, speedwalking down the sidewalk and around the corner.
The line shifted another pace behind me.
11:22am
After carefully examining the showtimes of movies I had no intention of seeing, I finally gave up on the paper and tucked it in my back pocket. I focused my attention now on peering through the window and sizing up the situation. All was very orderly, but the nervous energy was palpable.
Suddenly a car pulled up to the curb. Two curly haired kids jumped out, plopped a couple of quarters in the meter, and headed for the entrance. Jeremy extended his clipboard to stop them and gave them the bad news. I’m not sure if they had pretended not to notice the line outside the door or if, in their early adopter exuberance, the iPhone had given them tunnel vision to the point where they had zoned everything else out. It’s been known to do that from time to time.
Dejected, they returned to their car and drove off. Many of those who’d stood in line for over an hour shook their heads in amusement, and I began to understand full extent of my naiveté the day before. Theirs had already cost them fifty cents.
11:35am
Jeremy has returned with more bad news. There’s only four black 8GB iPhones left. Everyone else will have to settle for the white 16GB model. We began eyeing each other suspiciously. All was quiet until…
.jpg)
11:41am
I made my way to the counter and spoke with the very same clerk as before. I don’t know if he recognized me, but I wasn’t in the mood to make small talk. I dropped my fist generation iPhone on the counter and told him what I wanted. He asked for my digits and got the transfer account set up for me.
“And how many text messages would you like? You can have two hundred, fifteen hundred, or unlimited.”
“Text messages?” I wondered out loud why anyone would pay for unlimited text messages on a phone that sends emails, but then I told him to just sign me up for two hundred. We were wasting valuable time.
He went to the back room, and moments later came back with a little black box.
“You’re lucky,” he said waving it to me. “You got the last one.”
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