2. An iPhone Noob's Report: The In-Store Setup

As an iPhone neophyte, I had never gotten to experience the pleasures of at-home activation, but it sure seemed convenient as I waited my turn to be admitted to the Apple store. Instead, when I finally did make it through the doors and was greeted by an obnoxiously loud cheer from the employees, I experienced every possible inconvenience.

The Apple representative assigned to help me, Brian, began by asking me what version I wanted. I told him I had my eye on the 16 GB model in white. He promptly went to get it from the stockroom. As we began the process of inputting my desired plan into Brian’s handheld sales device, I began to get a sense that Brian didn’t exactly know what he was doing. He also seemed rather disgruntled to be reduced to an AT&T calling plan salesman. “I’m a computer consultant, I’m not really supposed to be doing this,” he said. However, he was very apologetic for the presumed activation complications I would soon experience.

I decided to go to an Apple store instead of an AT&T store primarily because I had faith that Apple employees are so well-trained and competent (based on prior Apple retail experiences) that the would easily learn AT&T’s system better than AT&T’s own store employees. Perhaps I overestimated the Apple employees.

When Brian began to ask me what type of plan I wanted—and whether I was a new or existing AT&T customer—Apple’s organized order of retail operations began to break down. Everyone in line for an iPhone 3G has a different scenario: Current AT&T customer who wants to upgrade, current iPhone owner who wants to upgrade, new AT&T customer, people who want to build a FamilyTalk plan with two iPhones, and even people who want to build a FamilyTalk plan with one iPhone and one other phone. I fell in this last camp. My husband is a current AT&T customer with a Blackberry, and I wanted to add a line to his plan (my phone number ported over from Sprint) to create a family plan.

After ten tries through the system, we finally got it right. But Brian made several mistakes in the inputting of data into his device. He would insist his device was asking for the new ported line’s phone number, when really, the device wanted the original plan owner’s phone number. With each successive try, he learned AT&T’s system, and so did I. I won’t bore you with the gory details of each inexplicable error message and mistake as we attempted to add me as an AT&T customer, but suffice it to say that AT&T employees are likely more familiar with the plans and options, as well as the computer system for setting up plans, than Apple employees are. Our Apple Store employee even had to make a call to AT&T customer service to get a question answered.

In the end, I learned something that neither AT&T nor Apple had yet disclosed: FamilyTalk plans that share minutes between an iPhone 3G and another phone are not possible. iPhones can share minutes with each other, so I was unable to create a FamilyTalk plan and instead will pay for an a la carte iPhone 3G plan.

After I paid for my phone and activation fee, my old Treo immediately ceased to work; I took this as a good sign! My phone number was making its way over to AT&T from Sprint.

But my hopes were soon dashed. Another Apple representative said he was going to attempt to activate my iPhone through iTunes. However, it didn’t take. Like so many other iPhone 3G buyers today, I was sent home to activate my device via iTunes at a later time. At least I was being given an opportunity to activate-at-home like last year’s iPhone trailblazers, but the experience was no more friendly than the in-store attempt.

I tried to activate as soon as I got home, but I’m receiving the same error messages as everyone else. In the meantime, I’m the proud owner of a small and shiny white brick.

Check back soon (I hope) for the second half of my New-to-iPhone First Look review.