Early Adopter

My story goes something like this; the Valley Faire mall (the “San Jose” Apple store) is literally 1/2 mile off my commute home from Adobe. So on Friday at 5:00 p.m., I figure I’ll stop by. Holy crap there’s 500+ lunatics in line here. Including Woz. Hi Woz. I seem to run into him every 5 years and 20 lbs. No f’ing way I’m that dedicated. I go home.

At MacWorld’s we used to call them Mac-Mac’s — imagine the Gilbert Godfried of Aflac duck fame, quacking, “Mac-Mac… Mac-MAC, MAC-MAC, as his only dialog while walking around, and you get the idea). We’re going to have to make up a new word for these iPhoney’s. By the way, I’m not as much of an iPhone enthusiast as I am a hater of my Motorola phone. I am literally going to drive over it repeatedly with my car… then put the crushed parts in the recycle bin (of course). We normally donate our phones to charity, but I wouldn’t want to do that to those less fortunate.

According to local news — Woz is getting an iPhone as an Apple employee by the end of July — and Steve said he’d fedex one to him by Sat. But Woz was having none of it, and wanted to be part of such a revolutionary device launch. He was so excited that he “couldn’t sleep”, so came down at 4:00 a.m. with family (and his 5 segways) to wait with the ordinary people. I had to laugh at that; common folk, in one of the most expensive malls, in one of the most expensive areas of the nation. My roommate here, qualified for low-moderate income home loan, because she only makes $130K/year; which with a $4,000/month mortgage+taxes is a tad rough. But i’ is still kinda like watching a Hollywood elite-arati protesting animal cruelty by boycotting wearing their Tommy Chu’s for the weekend (and wearing their Praada one’s instead). Woz is a really nice, but slightly loony eccentric uber-nerd millionaire who’s elevator may no longer be going all the way to the penthouse; but I mean that in a good way.

So I head out. Then epiphany; these phone are also being sold at ATT stores — one is 1/2 miles away from where I’m staying; right next to my gym that I go to, to regularly lose my fight with middle aged pudge. I bet they have fewer people there.

They did. Only about 50 in line. Now that’s more reasonable.

Unfortunately, the line was moving about as fast as ATT’s Edge network, after realizing they were only able to handle about 10 people per 30 minutes (something to do with their network being saturated from all the orders, or their people being unable to work a register) I went and got dinner while talking on the phone to Tim (proprietor of MyMac), where I proceeded to bitch incessantly about the stupidity, deceit and bias that is Michael Moore and his new “mockumentary”, the appropriately titled Sicko. (And lamenting the American idiot press that doesn’t have the wisdom of a 4 year old, to ever ask the question, “why?” or question daddy Michael’s “insight”). Tim of course relayed his stories of how woe on American healthcare, and we all have them. I just get pissed at the stupidity of comparing our worst case examples to their best — if you had a lick of balance and honesty, the tale would seem quite different.

So there I was, eating crappy fast-food-buffet-chinese — thinking perhaps culinary choices like this one have something to do with my losing battle against the scale? Naahh. Lucky for me, it is OK that I was rude and on cell phones in line and while in a restaurant, everyone is rude and pushy in California; I actually held a door, and said please or thank you, I’m the polite one. Seriously, I had to speak louder because people around me were talking on THEIR cell phones using their outdoor voices. Rude bastards.

After “dinner” of 1,500 calories of unrecognizable battered and fried crap, claiming to be chicken, and low-calorie rice, I went back to the death-star (ATT), and the line was down to 7. Woot. I waited. After 15 more minutes (did I mention this is ATT and they might be using Edge network?), they got to me and said, “We sold out after 30, but we have this nice blue receipt you can buy for $599, and we should ship it directly to you by tomorrow. Piss off. (Did I mention this was California and I’m the polite one?)

So I went back Saturday morning to the Apple store to see if they got their daily heroin shipment in. (The website said they did). They did. After a 10 minute wait, I was the gleefully skipping owner of an 8GB iPhone. Review to come soon.

P.S. Don’t worry, I didn’t give Michael Moore a nickel for his hate-mongering. I’m not a fan of piracy, but Michael Moore said he doesn’t mind if people use peer-to-peer file sharing to see his movies, so I took that as a legal binding contract between him and I. I’m half way through the Ingsoc, Outer-Party supported “masterpiece” of propaganda and disinformation, that tries to live up to the slogan “Ignorance is Strength”. I’d watch it quicker, but it makes me throw-up in my mouth a little after each segment. (I have read lots of detailed reviews, and researched his disinformation quite a bit). Basically the entire movie can be summed up, “if you hate the Buerocracy and insensitivity of an HMO, the solution is to eliminate all competition and by combing the compassion of the IRS with the efficiency of the DMV, we can create a super-unaccountable-government-run-HMO that is hyper-politicized, so everyone can know what it is like to be on medicare and use a VA hospital”. It is one of the few movies where you come out knowing less than you did going in (assuming you believe anything he says). Fortunately, the Canadian and British Press have been having a field-day mocking his utopic/delusional view of their systems; talking about the lines, diseases, rationed care, and so on. The Swedes showed fecal covered invalids in a filthy Cuban Hospital that Moore idealizes. His movies just inspire me to lookup the other side of the coin (we call it truth or balance) and research the costs and holes. But that’s a series of articles for some other day, and some other forum.