New iPhone brings Apple to its knees

So, I jumped in my car and drove the the SouthPark Apple store to purchase my brand new 3G iPhone. I’ve been so excited for this moment. I arrived at 6:45 AM with a two liter of diet coke and cash in hand. How exciting! I was greeted by Apple’s team cheering on the early arrivers. It has actually be a pretty exciting experience. (seriously)

Well, after wait for the 60 or so people in front of me to make it through the line, at about 9:30 AM, I finally get the thrill of walking into the Apple store. The transaction goes incredibly smoothly. I pay my money, they deactivate my Motorola Razor, then off to activation around 10:00 AM.

I unwrapped my glorious new purchase (the angels are singing) and plugged my new phone into the Apple Store iMac to activate.

Connecting….connecting….connecting.

After about 15 minutes of my iPhone attempting to activate, we get word that the AT&T server has crashed. No more iPhone activations and NO MORE iPHONE SALES!  Here’s the kicker…there are about 200 people waiting in line behind me who’ve also had the dream of owning a 3G iPhone. THEY HAVE STOPPED SELLING 3G IPHONES!!!! (at least for the past hour)

So, here I sit in the Apple Store, posting a blog about this amazing experience. (still waiting for my phone to activate…and it’s been over an hour.) Here’s the crazy news: if I unplug my phone to take it home, they tell me it’s possible that the phone is partly activated and unplugging it could create issues. ARGH!!

So now…no cell phone and no iPhone…stuck in the Apple store.  I guess it could be worse…I could be stuck in a Dell store.