Most of my friends were surprised I took as long as I did to get an iPhone but I finally pulled the trigger.  Well, it was more Myleene that did, but I went along for the ride.  I was willing to wait a week for the hype to die down but she had us stand in line for one on the Saturday of launch weekend (more on that later).  I had been reluctant to get any phone with a data up until now because, quite frankly, they sucked at what you got for what they cost.  See any of the first Treos or other Windows mobile phones as an example of this.

The first iPhone was the first phone I considered getting with a data plan because it was truly useful in my eyes (or at least how I woudl use it).  But alas, when it came out I still had 7 or so months on my Verizon contract plus I really didn’t like the idea of having to commit both 2 years AND $500-600 plus the cost of the plan for a first generation product.  By the time my contract was up I already saw rumblings of the new iPhone that was being rumored so I decided to wait….and wait…..and wait.

The process of buying the phone was relatively easy except for the fact that the Walnut Creek Apple store was completely underestimating how long their lines were.  By 1/2.  Seriously…they bordered on incompetent in this area.  They told us the line was about 90 minutes long when we called…it took more than 4 hours.  And this wasn’t a one time thing.  We called the day before and they said it was about 2 hours and it was the same length that night as it was on Saturday.  Someone in line had known someone that was in the back of that line the nigh before and they said it took 4 hours to get into the store.

The process of activating was pretty straight forward.  They brought out the phones, did the accessories, AppleCare, and MobileMe pitch.  Then the guy collected our personal information.  By the way, the guy who took us through the process turned out to be pretty hilarious especially considering he had done an 18 hour shift the day before.  During the approval process our account got snagged for review.  I was expecting this because we have fraud alerts on our accounts through LifeLock.  Apple called us on our numbers listed on the fraud alert, asked a LOT of questions to verify we were who we said we were (bravo Apple!) and then approved us.

Next up was activation which means just plugging into a laptop at the front desk.  We were able to access the Internet and make calls right away but not receive them.  We expected this a little because we ported numbers from Verizon.  The next day we still weren’t receiving calls so we made a call to AT&T and it turned out something got screwed up on their end so they completed the porting process while we were on the phone and then we were fully up and running.

Favorite apps so far?  The built-in Maps, the built-in E-mail (when paired with work and the VPN connectivity), Enigmo, Yelp, Pandora, Bloomberg, and Safari since it works great with Google and Meebo.  Tap tap is running a close second.  And how can I forget iTunes?  It rocks.  I’ve already ripped some of my DVDs into iPhone format and moved over some movies that I downloaded from iTunes for watching on BART during my commute.  Dr. Horrible and his Sing-Along Blog is hilarious so far.  Check it out!

I’ll discuss more about how I’m using it in another post.  Needless to say I’m quite pleased.  There are a few gotchas and things that could still be improved but almost all are things that are software related which means they’re fixable.  Just as long as Apple decides they’re a priority to fix/improve.