On Friday, June 29, 2007, I traveled an hour to the Crossgates Mall in Albany, NY, to purchase an iPhone at Apple's world premier. The iPhone went on sale at 6pm local time, all over the United States. I arrived at the mall around 5pm, about the ninetieth person in line. The windows of the Apple Store were covered in black cloth. At about 5:30, by which time the line had grown to about 120. They started a 30-minute timer on the two giant iPhones in the windows, and told us that we'd start going in, 20 at a time, at the stroke of 6:00. They handed out water to whomever wanted it (I took one), and wheeled out a table of Starbucks coffee, regular and decaf, and reorganized the line to be as out of the way of mall traffic as possible. There was a Channel 13 camera on hand, interviewing some of the customers.
The crowd counted down the final seconds to 6pm, and the Apple people opened the doors and let in the first 20 people right on schedule. The line moved pretty steadily, and I got in at about 6:30. They directed people in front of me to the cash registers, and led me on a circuitous route to the Genius Bar, where I was beckoned away by a saleslady with one of those portable credit card readers. She asked whether I wanted th 4 or 8 gig model. I said 8. She got it. We did the credit card thing, including fetching my email address so they could mail my receipt (I got a paper receipt, too). 6:35 and I had my treasure!
I spent some time looking at accessories, and picked out a leather folio case and a car charger. Another damsel with a portable credit card reader completed my purchase. I grabbed a cup of coffee on the way out, and drove home, stopping on the way to get some fish and chips for dinner.
We recently lost the nice Canon camera with which I took most of the photos on this site, so I was left with the iSight camera on my iMac to take the photos below, while I unboxed my new toy.
I updated to iTunes 7.3 before going to the Apple Store, and I had watched the videos, so I was ready to authorize my iPhone. It went without a snag except for the minute or two it took for AT&T's computer to do the credit check. Then it took a while to subset my music so it would fit in the 7.24 gigs of free space. I ended up with 5.92 gigs of music, 535.2 megs of video (a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode), 265.7 megs of Photos (my entire iPhoto library), 22.4 megs of calendar, address book, and other data, and 528.6 megs of free space.
I was expecting my iPhone to be primarily an iPod, calendar and address book when at home, because I thought there was no AT&T cell coverage of the little valley where I live. Their coverage maps show no coverage (but they DO show coverage 5 miles easy, 20 miles west, and 15 miles south). What a pleasant surprise it was to discover 5 bars! Bravo AT&T!
I'm loving it. Yes, it has some flaws, but it's beautiful and will hopefully serve me for many years to come.
On with the photos. You can see a slide show at picasaweb.google.com/imacpr0n/IPhonePr0n.
The box still in its celophane wrapper
The box with the cellophane removed
The side of the box
The edge of the box
The back of the box
Box Cover removed
iPhone still wrapped in cellophane
Back of iPhone in cellophane
The box under the removed iPhone
The rest of the box contents revealed
The ear buds
The dock
The bottom of the dock
The power transformer
The USB port on the power transformer
The charging and sync cable
The earbuds uncoiled
The iPhone unwrapped
The back of the iPhone unwrapped
The Incase carrying case box
The back of the Incase carrying case box
The Incase leather folio, unboxed
The back of the Incase leather folio, unboxed
The Griffin PowerJolt box
The back of the Griffin PowerJolt box
The Griffin PowerJolt car charger, unboxed
The free water
The free coffee
The iPhone's camera takes 1200x1600 pixel pictures, a little under 2 megapixels. It has no zoom, and no flash, but takes pretty good pictures if there's enough light, and your subject doesn't move while being photographed. Below are a couple of examples, taken outside my house. Click on either one for the full 2 megapixel resolution version.
Young burdock
Wild flowers
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