Across the world they gathered and waited like little children hoping to see Santa at the local shopping mall, only to be disappointed and find what many had expected on opening day. It wasn't exactly a lump of coal, but, Apple's much coveted slick new 3G device was not only in short supply, but in many locations, there were problems with getting the phone to actually work.
Auckland, New Zealand was the first to offer the iPhone and opened a few minutes after midnight Friday morning, where 22 year-old Jonny Gladwell, pictured above, who had camped outside the Vodafone store for a staggering 55 hours, was officially the world's first new owner of the iPhone 3G.
Another super 3G iTard, 24-year-old Luke Soules, flew all the way from San Luis Obispo,
California, to Auckland to line up and purchase one of first 3G iPhones. Hopefully, he doesn't have to go all the way back to the place of purchase to take care of any technical problems!
Die-hard fans in both London and New York were a little less fortunate as the momentum gathered causing chronic web overload and problems getting the phone to come online. Around 150 had Apple-heads gathered out side Apple's Store on Regent Street in London only to have to wait even longer as the iPhone 3G was having problems being connected. The problem was also experienced by O2, Apple's exclusive partner in the UK.
New York was next in line and was also experiencing similar technical difficulties. Much of the blame has been put on the sheer volume of activity surrounding the launch on the web. There were around 70 iPhonies gathered out side the AT&T store in the Big Apple where it took half an hour for staff to get the impatient customers iPhones up and running.
The iGlitch was was apparently with downloading the iTunes software. In the end staff were telling the proud new owners to go home and plug into iTunes via their desktop computers to get the phone to spring to life.
I'm sure for many of the tired and bleary-eyed iPhone customers this was music to their ears.