Where will you be on iPhone 3G launch day?
To prepare for next week’s 8 a.m. launch of the iPhone 3G, both Apple and AT&T have released videos (guided tour and how-to clips) and answers to common questions to keep the lines moving and the confusion/chaos to a minimum. There’s even a ridiculously named "Get iReady Checklist" (PDF) that customers are encouraged to print out (great, something for people to push into cashiers’ faces!).
More important than the two companies’ plans for you, however, are the plans you’ve made for yourself. Have you already taken off from work? Are you fake coughing at meetings this week so everyone understands why you called in sick on July 11th? Will you camp out in front of the Apple Store the night before? Two nights before? Three?
Because of our timezone, Hawaii (where I live) will be the last place on earth to get the iPhone 3G on launch day. We’re GMT -10, which means we’re 3 hours behind California, 6 hours behind New York, 11 hours behind London, and 19 hours behind Japan. My husband and I are also vampires, so 8 a.m. is actually just a few hours past our bedtime. In other words, I’ll be sleeping through liftoff.
I’ll head over to Apple or AT&T for my temporary Tilt replacement (the XPERIA X1 is already in line to replace my iPhone 3G) some time in the afternoon or early evening.
If the launch is anything like it was last year, I expect to be home a few hours later, right around the time when everyone is beyond sick of hearing launch-day stories from around the world, has lost count of the number of identical unboxings posted on Flickr and tech blogs, and already knows everything there is to know about the phone because Engadget has already put up their definitive review.
So that’s what I’ll be doing that day. What about you?
