Phone Line.

Well, sadly, the wait goes on. With a launch day short on stock and long on queues, I'll be waiting a little longer to take my iPhone home.

My initial plan was to head out early to Optus World in Epping, as I figured surely out in Epping demand would be low? Unfortunately, Optus had thought of that too and so only shipped 19 units out to the store, of which less than half were 16GB, less than half of those were black and of that tiny handful all were already accounted for by pre-order deposits. "Should I turn up tomorrow morning?" I asked the lady on the phone. "Don't bother," was the reply.

Plan B then was to catch the early train to Preston, pop over to Optus World to see what the situation was, and hope for the best. Maybe if I managed to hit the front of the queue I'd still be in with a chance? It was on the way to work anyway, so no harm done if things didn't work out. Got to Reservoir station in time for the 6:18 and, you won't believe it, it was cancelled. Thanks Connex. Next train? 6:38. And it was late. By the time I got to Preston, the line was already over 20 deep.


So I joined the end and ended up having a good chat to some fellow queuees as we waited to see how quickly the line would move. After half an hour of it moving nowhere, I conceded it wasn't going to be my lucky day and headed off to work on my regular train. On getting there I was relieved to find that of the many planning to get iPhones only two had been able to do so, and only by signing up with Vodafone whose plans are terrible. I just wasn't that desperate. Popped out at lunch and signed up for Round 2 with Optus, so now the waiting game begins. Anyone fancy some Hungry Hungry Hippos?

UPDATE
To sell its first million first-generation iPhones it took Apple 74 days. With iPhone 3G, nicely enough, it's taken them just three.