Tales from the very first iPhone line

June 29, 2007 is hot. Texas hot.

I’m hunched beneath an ugly orange awning that features the blue Death Star logo, getting what shade I can out of the thing as it flaps limply in a breeze hot and damp as dog's breath. Behind my back is the cool glass of a store window, on which you can still see the fading outline of recently removed “CINGULAR STORE” vinyl banners. It’s not quite 90 degrees Fahrenheit—that’s about 32 degrees Celsius for you Celsius fans—but the 90 percent humidity robs the shade of almost all of its comfort. The world is a slowly baking convection oven, and the glass I’m leaning on is the only nice thing in it.

A friendly lady from the cosmetics store next door is making the rounds again with bottles of water from a wicker basket, along with coupons for mascara. Her mascara looks solid in spite of the dripping humidity. I take a coupon.

But it doesn’t matter. None of the discomfort matters, not in the long run, because when this is over—in three more hours—my life will be different. In three more hours, I’ll have an iPhone.

Beggaring belief

Oh, I’m not one of those idiots who listens in slack-jawed amazement to Steve Jobs’ proclamations; I don’t even own a Mac (not yet, at least—I don’t know it now, but in five months I’ll ditch my aging Windows PC for a shiny new aluminum iMac). I don’t buy into the promises of the Jesus Phone that will save the world and usher in a new era of understanding and friendship—the beret-wearing Apple zealots can keep their love beads and their single-button mice. I don’t think the device I’m a few hours from buying will make me a better person. Nor will it turn me into a lesbian. It’s just a phone, and I recognize that.

But. But, I am intrigued. Intrigued by keynotes and demonstrations that show a device with some damn interesting functionality—like a useful Web browser, a slick address book, and an interface that appears to have been designed with actual thought and care. I am particularly impressed by how easily Jobs set up a three-way conference call on stage. Just tap a single button; no random guessing about whether or not you have to hold down “SEND” and no accidental hanging up. (The fact that the original keynote demo was a hair’s breadth from imploding the entire time it ran wouldn’t be known to the public for some time. From our perspective, it just worked.)

And, of course, there’s the idea of giving a huge middle finger to the cell carriers. A phone without any crap on it? In my clammy pocket at this exact moment is a Moto RAZR (same as Woz, evidently). This RAZR blares a tinny Cingular tune on startup and shows an animated Cingular banner on both its screens; it has a giant “CINGULAR” logo stamped into the back of it. More than anything else, I relish the idea of a phone free of carrier crap.

Three hours to go before I see for myself.

A friend indeed

At half past eleven that morning I’d showered, slathered on sunscreen, dressed, and departed for the closest AT&T store—which is just a few hundred feet away from the retail space that used to be our friendly local Babbage’s. Waiting in line for this phone meant spending six more hours close to a place where I’d already spent countless hours in my formative years. On the whole, it didn’t seem an unreasonable time investment for such a cool piece of technology.

Even though by 2007 I was already a seasoned sysadmin and technology veteran, this was the first time I’d felt strongly enough about a retail purchase to wait in line. I had a book and I was ready for six hours of monotony. I didn’t even have a smartphone to pass the time. Pretty much no one did, except corporate types with Blackberries and angry neckbeards with Treos, and neither of those classes of folks would be caught dead buying an iPhone. Not yet, at least—it took a few years for the iPhone to swallow those demographics.

But then I got a surprise call from my buddy Jason, a childhood friend and former Babbage’s coworker. He was bored and had the day off and wanted to know what I was doing. I told him I was burning most of the day in line to get an iPhone. After pondering for a moment, he volunteered to come wait with me.

“Are you going to buy one, too?” I asked.

“Nah,” he replied coolly. “It looks stupid and Apple sucks. But I’ll come hang out so you don't have to stand there alone all day like a dumbass. Or like more of a dumbass, I guess.”

Lesson learned: the best friends are those who will wait with you in a product launch line for something they don’t even care about.

Time flies never to be recalled

Jason and I had arrived at the AT&T store at noon and had become persons number two and three in line for iPhones. The number one slot was held by a fellow about my age who appeared to be asleep; he opened his eyes, nodded at us as we eased down onto the warm concrete, and then closed them again. Over the next couple of hours more people gradually showed; by 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the line of would-be iPhone owners has grown to about 60 people and stretches to the end of the shopping center. The last few folks are wrapped around the side of the building and are sitting in full sun, though they have lawn chairs and umbrellas.

My shirt is streaked with salt from sweat, and my hair and eyes are grimed with it. I ponder, for the hundredth time, packing it in and going across the street to the Apple Store in Baybrook Mall—even if I was way back in line, I’d be inside. But that brings us to the reason I was at the AT&T store in the first place: my wife and I shared a corporate discount cell phone plan. Worse, it was a legacy “orange” Cingular plan and not a new “blue” AT&T plan. I didn’t want to give it up, and so I'd figured that the best thing to do would be to pick up my phone directly from the AT&T store and let the AT&T people transfer the plan over, rather than trying to explain the situation to Apple Store employees who might be totally ignorant about the vagaries of legacy corporate discount shared plans.

“Do you ever wonder if Starfleet has a Human Resources division?” asks Jason suddenly into the sweaty silence of the waiting line.

“Maybe,” I reply, slowly dragging my gaze across the crowded concrete expanse of I-45 in the distance. Through shimmering heat haze, a million cars crawl across the freeway in a never-ending traffic jam. “It kind of seems like Counselor Troi is basically the Enterprise’s HR department.”

“I can’t really see her delivering a ship-wide seminar on sexual harassment or anything,” Jason continues, chewing on a nail. “Then again, maybe I can. It’d be called, like, Space: The Ultimate Hostile Work Environment.”

The number one person in line, who’d been silent for hours, suddenly turns his head. “Well, recall that in Measure of a Man, we find out that Starfleet maintains sector-level JAG offices on various starbases,” he says in very soft, very deep, very precise Received Pronunciation. “Perhaps they have an HR corps as well.”

Jason and I both stare at him and then start nodding slowly, accepting this information. It is a point well-made, and I’ll believe pretty much anything if it’s coming from someone who sounds like Richard Burton making out with Stephen Fry.

The next hour passes in silence. We get another round of water from the make-up lady’s wicker basket.