I was able order an iPhone on the Apple store. I got on right at 9pm when the store opened, and it was getting killed. It took about 10 minutes to make the 5 or 6 clicks to order the phone. But it worked, I got a confirmation.
I then read a lot of blogs that said the Apple stores had tons of phones, and no lines. I drove down to the local Apple store this morning. Sure enough, no line. Probably about 10 people in the store all checking out the iPhone. No one was at the checkout counter. I asked the Apple guy: "Got any 8 gig iPhones?" He said "Yup." I bought one. Brought it home, activated it (transferring my existing AT+T phone number) in about 7 minutes. Works perfectly. My email accounts, contacts and calendar synchronized automatically. Literally zero work in terms of setting up POP accounts or whatever. Picked up my home wireless automatically.
Then I canceled my pending order at the online store.
General first impressions:
1. It's smaller, and especially thinner than I expected. Makes my old Treo 650 look like an ancient brick phone from the 80s.
2. the "flick" scrolling is unbelievable spot-on. It's 100 times better than any other scrolling interface that has ever existed. The level of fine control you have is incredible, and it's completely intuitive.
3. on-screen keyboard is pretty easy to use. I haven't done any serious typing, like sending emails.
