This was indeed a difficult day.
I waited in line for four hours. My choice.
Everyone in line was offered water, coffee, entertainment, candy and pizza to keep them fed and happy while waiting. There were a ton of Apple Store folks circulating and triaging people’s questions and when there was no answer to be had, they went and found someone/where that had it and returned with the answer.
My husband and I both got iPhones, the staff was happy and pleasant and very knowledgeable. They had confirmed throughout the day they had stock for everyone in line at varying intervals and while it did take 20–30 minutes to complete the activation process, most of that time was watching the computer try to get confirmation from AT&T’s servers. (BTW, we also had our choice of models and left with fully active iPhones. Which we got when it was our turn 6 hours after they went on sale. )
Now, that said, we did our homework, took our patience with us and were already AT&T customers so there were no real surprises.
As for MobileMe, I’ve been with dotMac since the first year and it’s rollout was similar in it’s bumpy ride and every upgrade to dotMac has held some surprises. That’s a lot of upgrades in applications and user data/interfaces. The one thing I do know and feel strongly that I can rely on, is that when Mobile me does come back online. It will work. In the meantime you can still get dotMac email through a Mail program.
If MS had attempted all this, we’d still be waiting… for everything.
A bad day for Apple, probably. The worst day for Apple, certainly not. Also, if you think you are unhappy, imagine what the “guy responsible” is hearing from Mr. Jobs about now. That would be a nightmare day at work. That is of course if he was allowed to keep both his head and his job.