Reader: iPhone store experience "cool" but Activation S-L-O-W

Reader jkinner wrote me last night to report that while the iPhone buying experience was straight on, the activating experience proceded at a snail's pace:

I'm in Southern NJ, and I went to both an AT&T store (limited stock, but only 1.5 hours from arrival to departure with an iPhone) and and Apple store. The Apple store was certainly a lot more fun. I'd hate to spoil the surprise if they do anything tomorrow, so I'll just say it was a cool experience. They also had lots of iPhone boxes sitting right behind the registers. That certainly explained the guard at the front of the store!

However, after arriving home with 2 iPhones, I had to spend 3 hours beating my head against the abysmal activation system. I know, lots of other people had absolutely no problem. Well, good for you, I say, and congrats!

After getting over that hurdle (apparently a technical glitch in the integration between Apple's and AT&T's parts of the credit approval process), I've still been waiting 1.5+ hours for the "additional time to complete" to be up. Hopefully, I can stay awake a little while longer and actually see the thing work.

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