Your mistake was you didn't persevere enough on the Apple Store app and went to at&t instead. Many of us in SoCal got our orders in by 12:45 am through the Apple Store app with a little persistence.
I am in SoCal and via the iphone app could not get my order in for 2 hours. I have always gotten my orders through within 7 minutes. First time I had such a delay. Kept getting error message it couldn't connect to the server kept just circling circling circling finally at 2:07 AM my order went through AT&T 64 gig gold
Believe me I was very persistent!!! Not my first time ordering been ordering iPhones for seven years