well now...
The two hours I waited on line from 6am to 8am the day they went on sale at the Towson, MD Apple Store is starting to seem like it was a really good idea! And yes, the iPhone 3G rules, and is probably the biggest product launch Apple has ever done (and AT&T, and every other carrier selling it). I think it's normal to expect problems, and waits, etc. Now, the Wii is a totally different story -- over a year and a half after its release, and it is impossible to find still. That is a seriously big problem (and has more to do with Nintendo shipping units to Europe and Japan over the USA, where the dollar is so weak -- Apple will not do this, as the USA is their home and most significant market).
As for "Apple really messed this up" -- you have to think about the limits of manufacturing, and what is even possible. Let's say Apple has a contract with a massive manufacturer, and one assembly line can pump out one iPhone a second. That's 60 iPhones a minute. 3600 iPhones an hour. 86,400 iPhones a day, if they are going 24/7. Now, I find it hard to believe an assembly line could pump out nearly so many units, but hey, let's assume these numbers are accurate. Well, how many days before release were the phones in active production? Not too many I'd wager, as part of the manufacturing process is imaging the phones with the 2.0 software. Which I doubt went Golden Master too many days before release, maybe 2 weeks? So if Apple had 14 days to really ramp up final manufacturing steps and disk imaging of iPhones at 2.0 Golden Master, and then boxing them up for shipment, that's only 1.2 million phones they could have boxed and had ready to sell in the two weeks. They sold nearly that many IN A WEEKEND, PEOPLE. IN A WEEKEND. We are talking one of the most successful consumer electronics product launches IN HISTORY, especially on such a global scale. It is an AMAZING proposition of scale, managing resources, supply channels, distribution channels -- cut The Steve some slack!
Now, my numbers are probably way off -- but they will give you some sense of the scale of such a rollout, and how utterly unprecedented demand on a GLOBAL level can dash any major corporation's well thought out plans. For a lesson in bad distribution management, look at Nintendo and the Wii. If it's still almost IMPOSSIBLE to find an iPhone in a year and a half, Apple is having some problems. I doubt it will get to that point.
