Miami
Turned out Miami had enough units to go around -- would have helped a lot of people if Apple had simply indicated how many they had per store. When you hear that 300 people are in line and can buy up to 2 iPhones, a rumor that there are only 500 units per Apple Store gets your attention.
In the end, it looked like about 60% of the first-day crowd were buying two units and 80% or more took the 8GB. I would estimate they sold 700+ iPhones at The Falls yesterday evening -- with accessories, they must have rung up $500,000 in sales there. Sweet!
The line at The Falls (South Miami) reached 200 by 4pm and 300-325 just before 6pm. People were moved into the store in groups of 10-50, at an average pace of around 2 per minute. Once in the store it took another 20-30 minutes to wind through the line inside the store. The Apple Store were helpful and in high spirits.
If you had a laptop with you, it was possible to activate right in the store which a number of buyers did. From opening the box to activation of the iPhone took less than 5 minutes. I actually received my first call while I was still in the store.
The activation screens were a cinch. The only hitch I had was that the iPhone did not import all my Entourage mailing accounts. I did have to go to the help pages to figure out how to navigate "Settings" to add accounts that had not been imported. But otherwise the imports worked great.
I did not find the EDGE network slow. As one other Forum member mentioned, as long as the page loads faster than one reads, it really is fine. That was my experience. Typing was not a problem, except I found the intelligent keyboard struggles with email addresses because they are often so counter-intuitive. Long-term I don't know if this is a problem but I did struggle with typing when I was adding email accounts.
The call volume was OK, not great, but it was pandemonium at the Apple Store and the staff was using megaphones, so that is probably the culprit.
Having used the web browser, mail and phone functions so far, I have to say that it already has blown away my expectations. The sync functionality puts Palm to shame -- it is the fastest sync I have ever seen and its ability to sync out multiple email addresses, handle voice mail, and take up practically no space on my desk while docked with the laptop has me seriously questioning this morning whether I need my legacy office land-line. The screen resolution and deletion is so easy on the iPhone that it's a pleasure to receive email on a mobile device for the first time ever.
