The iPhone 3G has launched in Canada…sorta

This pretty much sums it up (works best if you use Twitter):

(via Sean Osteen on Flickr)

Despite being in line at 4am, it still took over 4 hours for me to have a working iPhone 3G after physically getting it due to server issues. I’ll elaborate more on the phone in a future post (or two) but suffice to say this morning was a clusterfuck is an understatement.

It would appear that my plan to stay in the burbs rather than head to a major outlet worked as I was able to get into the store (being first in line helped) and get my choice of phone (8/16gb in black or white).

Then the fun started.

I saw on Twitter that the Apple activation server was down earlier that morning as the people on the east coast started twittering about their phones hours before the west coast. Once I got into the store, not surprisingly, the system that Rogers uses to make changes to your phone plan (like say add the 3G data plan) was timing out due to too many people trying to access it. After waiting for about 45 minutes, the store clerk retrying every few minutes, I finally get a positive response on their servers and they began processing my account. The iPhone was still shrinkwrapped in the box.

Once the Rogers process started working, they informed me that my current phone would stop working as they transfered my details to the sim preloaded inside the iPhone. Sounds great except for the fact that I was scheduled to participate in the Bill Good Show at 11am and it was about 10:15 at this time…kind of hard to phone into a radio show if you don’t have a phone. You see the problem was that my ‘old’ iPhone didn’t work anymore (the sim card inside technically) and I wasn’t able to activate the new iPhone on Apple’s servers.

Effectively I was in iLimbo with no working phone, new or old.

Peter, who was second in line with me, ended up coming to the rescue by running back to my place and picking up my wife’s phone so that I could call into the radio show. He would have given me his but he was next in line for iLimbo so it didn’t make sense to risk it.

After the radio show finished up, I tried again and it failed…so we went off to lunch.

Once I got home from lunch, I plugged in my new phone and it was activated…it’s like it didn’t even have time to ‘phone home’.

Last I heard, Tanya and Tod were still stuck outside the Fido store downtown waiting to get in. Ironically, when I left the mall, there were still people coming in, walking right up and getting iPhones. They only had 8gb models left (Peter & I got the only 2 black 16gb models) but the people coming in weren’t complaining. Maybe Tanya should jump on the West Coast Express and come out to the burbs?

So there’s the morning wrap up. More stuff coming when I catch my breath (and some sleep). I’m hoping to have a copy of the radio show to post soon too….with another post to cover off the crazies that called in.

I’m off to play in 3G land for awhile…possibly on a patio, definitely with beer.

Update: Here’s the source stream to the audio (WMA) from CKNW today with Tanya & myself. Head to around the 7:15 mark for the start our our bit.

Update 2: Here’s the full CKNW session (direct mp3 download)