IPhone - brought to you by ....

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oops! Somebody gots some 'xplaining to do on the carpet Monday morning...

iPhone - the midnight hour

Listen - do you hear what I hear?

It's the sound of iPhones activating and syncing through iTunes across this great land.

What a Country!

I went over to the Apple store to do a final wrap up around 11 pm and got to spend some quality time on the iPhone. With a pretty impressive user interface, it works as advertised. I wish I could have taken some photos, but none were allowed in the store.

All of the 8GB flash drive models were sold out, leaving just the 4GB available. Still a few buyers were walking out having purchased the shrink wrapped boxes in a black heavy stock paper gift bag.


(photo courtesy of ThinkSecret)

First chance you get, I would advise spending some time with the iPhone. And while you're there, soak up the customer experience - from the instore signage, window displays, and Apple staff to the online Apple tutorials, I have never seen a greater marketing and merchandising case study.

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If you prefer visiting the AT&T store, go tribal like the apes approaching the mysterious black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.



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I'm curious how Allen, Kavasia and Taylor fared in the sun at the Cingular store...



Allen arrived at 10 pm Thursday night (he's calling his mom and dad for his 1st iPhone call)...



Kavasia is being paid to wait in line ...



Taylor who not only thinks the iPhone is "AWESOME!" especially compared to her current Motorola Silvr, is planning on calling her boyfriend. But she assured me that he is not getting the iPhone. Smart girl - make him wait in line!

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This morning I wanted to meet the last person in line - who happened to be #48 at the time - mDave - (a local blogger at NashvilleFeed.com!) mDave took the time to live blog the launch day seen here leaning up against the Cingular kiosk.



Check out his play by play commentary... Good stuff.

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My Palm Treo friend Mashby was over at the Hickory Hollow Mall AT&T store and files this report:



Seems they [the Hickory Hollow mall security] don't allow photos to be taken in the mall and I was warned not to take anymore. :-)

Anyway, there were about 20 people there at 4:14pm and the store was set to close at 4:30 pm. The staff looked like they were preparing for an occupation.



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I'd like to send a big shout out to Chris Mohney at Gridskipper for the honor of representing Nashville as #12 of 20 cities on the coast to coast coverage.

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To my writing buddies over at GearDiary, I am thrilled that you were scoring your iPhones! Congrats to Doug, Vincent, Mike and Matt - let's see those unboxing photos soon!

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And to wrap things up, all I have in my hands iPhone wise to enjoy are my color PDF printouts - and be a pretender...

But the team over at Think Secret have disassembled a fresh iPhone and have posted a gallery of photos - ENJOY!



Good night to all!

iPhone - the line up!

Last November 2006, I had a lot of fun visting with some neat people camping for a PlayStation 3.

Back in the seventies, I camped out in line overnight at the Omni in Atlanta for four tickets to see Beatle George Harrison. The tour was subsequently cancelled as he lost his voice during the tour. And it was cold!

The other time was to see the Rolling Stones at the Fox Theatre, also in Atlanta. That was more fun. It was on a Saturday morning plus I drove a Chevy Van at the time with a sectional couch inside, and so the wait was comfortable. My friend Stan had enough administrative skills to buy a roll of tickets to set up a voucher system. Thus, we could mill around, leave and come back as the crowd consensus was to line up in order two hours before the tickets went on sale.

And Woodstock? - That was a long time ago and a different story.

Today is the day that Apple Fans have been anticipating - the iPhone.

So early this morning, I ventured out the the Nashville Apple Store and got to visit with some nice folks -



Let's say hi to:

The first iPhone dude in line!



Patrick arrived at 4:20 am. He loves the quality of Apple products and was hooked after seeing Steve Jobs' keynote on the iPhone. 1st call on his iPhone? His stepdad to "rub it in"...

Patrick's friend Adam arrived at 4:20 also. He's giving up his Motorola phone for the iPhone.



1st call on his iPhone? "Work"... Might be good to let them know!

Meet Devin. He arrived soon after to claim the number three spot. He has a Blackberry.



1st call on his iPhone? His friend whose wife won't let him get an iPhone. Yup, making a mortgage payment takes precendent.

Benji has been rocking out with some iTunes since 4:45 am.



Why an iPhone? One word: "MacJunkie"

1st call on his iPhone? His mom-in-law (protecting the favorite son-in-law status... I would!)

And here's Megan who gets the employee of the year award.



She caught the 5:15 to stand in for her boss who works at a recording studio (probably sound asleep!) Megan will hopefully catch some overtime pay, if not a raise on her next paycheck.

Meanwhile around the corner at Cingular... it is H O T outside.





And keep watch on my Flickr set

iPhone line starts here!

Unlike New York, here in Nashville, Tennessee it's very quiet the evening before the expected multitudes decend upon the jammed packed Hillsboro Road in Green Hills leading to the Cingular store or the Apple store inside the Green Hills Mall.

If I can get my carcass up at 5 am, then I'll take a few photos of the first ten people in line. The Mall at Green Hills is set to open at 5 am with the Apple store opening at 10:00 am. The crazy thing is that they will close at 2 pm to reset the store, train the employees, roll out the monolith display... and then open at 6 pm.



The oversized iPhone displays look awesome in the windows; inside all of the laptops have the iPhone screens shots touting July 29. "Touch Your Music" is one theme I saw playing.



Just less than two miles away is the Cingular store (no signage change yet) all dark and quiet. I doubt that there will be a line forming... No parking, little to no lobby space, and standing outside in humid Nashville weather is no fun... especially when the alternative is air conditioning and restrooms inside the mall.



Check out the Apple display... inside the Cingular store...



These Apple displays are amazing...



As they scroll though the screen shots...



Am I getting an iPhone? NOPE; I rather have a window display unit!



Meanwhile I'll just be content with the iPhoney skin on the Treo 650 & 680... and the 20" iMac. I've been using the Samsung Blackjack which I love, so I'll catch the iPhone down the road at some point.

Stay iTuned for an update in the morning...

And keep watch on my Flickr set

iPhone - who's on?

Get this widget!

I'm looking forward to the launch of the iPhone - Sure the value proposition is nowhere near the hype - if I wanted to buy a separate iPod and continue using either my Blackjack or Treos, the deal is better - but I am curious who will be in line to snag the new iPhones on Day One. Whether I myself hold one in my hands remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: I'll have my camera ready just in case I see any folks camping out overnight.

Some headlines:

M:Metrics reports that consumer awareness of the iPhone is strong--64 percent of Americans are aware of the iPhone as are 56 percent of Brits.

- Fierce Wireless

And from TechWireless:

So, you want an iPhone, do you? I can't blame you, we've only been talking about the thingevery single day for the last few months here at DailyTechRag. As we've mentioned, however, there aren't likely to be enough iPhones on shelves to meet demand come the 29th, so you might want to start planning out your strategy for the launch now. Here are some helpful tips:

The iPhone will only be available at company-owned AT&T retail stores, Apple stores and on Apple's website.

Just because a store sports AT&T/Cingular signage, doesn't mean that it's company-owned. There are only about 1,800 company-owned retail stores in the U.S., so confirm with your intended point of pick-up ahead of time or use this store locator (look for stores that are not labeled as "AT&T authorized retailers").

While Apple has officially barred resellers from taking iPhone pre-orders, a lot of AT&T stores have set up wait lists anyway. Stop by your local store and find out if they have a list--act fast, as many of these lists are already filling up.

You'll need an iTunes account to set up your iPhone, so make sure that you have one set up ahead of time.

Really want an iPhone? If you can't get on a wait list, your best bet is probably camping out outside of an AT&T store (Apple stores will reportedly have fewer units on the 29th). Hey, no one ever said this was going to be easy.

ZDNet The great iPhone hunt of 2007

Me and the Music - Goin' Mobile

Requiem for a Heavyweight: iPod reign is utterly over is a fantastic article at from Tomi Ahonen who is a four-time bestselling author and consultant, lecturing at Oxford on high tech and convergence.

Tomi had a controversial article on the pending demise of iPods dominance last September 2005 and later, correctly forecasted for 2006 how the mobile phone business will take over the MP3 music player market. Long story short, Apple's introduction of the iPhone totally makes sense to capture a slice of the market where musicphones are outselling iPods 7 to 1 - 309 million musicphones to 46 million iPods.

Read about how the iPhone stacks up against the competition in the world market against musicphones such as the LG Chocolate, Sony Ericsson Walkman and the Nokia N Series Phones

And last...I leave you with this:

... Which brings me to the removable storage. iPods have internal storage only. Any smartphone today has removable storage. Today 4 GB of removable is already available, many times the storage of low-end Nanos. And now you can switch series of music collections - both among your own tastes (if you have a large collection) - or among your friends, simply by snapping in a different memory module. Most musicphones allow hot-swapping this without removing the battery, meaning changing gigabyte musicfiles is as easy as changing CDs on a CD player. The phone is superior at its storage options. The phone is Better.

The days of the Brick and Mortar music stores are going to be hard pressed to keep up unless they also reinvent themselves just as Apple is doing moving from the iPod to the iPhone to maintain their market. Being a niche player of physical goods will be challenging in a digital world for record labels as well.

The Gadget

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

iPhone: Thought of the Day

I'm just wondering if we'll see long lines camped outside Cingular and Apple stores with a new breed of early adopters waiting to be the first to get their hands on an iPhone...



iphone countdown begins

I'm having second thoughts now on an iPhone - $599 is a good headstart for a plasma TV; laptop, camera, cruise vacation, down payment towards a Honda Element, zeroing out a credit card, groceries for a month or so... hmmm...

Maybe I can camp out in line and have some businessman's admin assistant pay me $1100 for my spot in line. Yeah... that's what I'll do!