I thought long and hard about the introductory paragraph in what will be a series of articles about my first week with Apple’s new iPhone. I contemplated telling you that it’s not often that tech gadgets come along that create the human emotion known as awe - not “wow”, as in Microsoft’s painfully contrived “Wow Starts Now” mantra describing their yawn-inducing Windows Vista launch - but sheer jaw-dropping awe. I considered describing in detail the almost spiritual act of opening the iPhone box for the first time (Apple does have amazing packaging), then cradling the telephonic talisman in my palm, my pulse quickening and the nerve endings of my fingers tingling in anticipation of my first multi-touch zoom into and out of a photo or web page.

But I decided not to get into all that, ‘cause it just sounded too creepy. Instead, I’m just gonna tell you about the first seven days with my new iPhone. Needless to say, it’s been an interesting week.
The line in front of the AT&T store at Cooks Corner numbered in the dozens, unlike the hundreds camped out in front of Apple Retail Stores across the country. Some were locals, some were just passing through on their way to vacation homes and wisely stopping by to try to score an iPhone at an “off the beaten path” AT&T location.

At 6:00 PM the doors opened. Since iPhone activation isn’t accomplished in the store as with other cellphones, we were in and out in just a few minutes.

The drive from Cooks Corner to our home in Bath has never taken so long. No, it wasn’t holiday traffic. I wanted to get home and get the activation process started before the big city line-waiters even got out of the mall. I figured with a couple hundred thousand new iPhone owners all trying to “port” their phone numbers from their old cellphone companies to AT&T in a single six-hour period, the sooner I got started the better. I have never been more right.

After the unpacking ritual described above I set to activating my wife’s iPhone first. I should mention here that you can’t really do anything with the iPhone until the activation process is complete, other than gaze at the terrific screen, which is locked onto a photo of the earth and teasing you with the reminder that your iPhone is not yet activated.

From within the iTunes application, I provided the necessary information and selected our plan. We decided on a “Family Plan” for our two iPhones – sharing 1400 minutes per month for $100. My wife wanted to keep her old phone number – I was still undecided, again suspecting delays in the porting process.

In under ten minutes I clicked the final button. Just a few more minutes to port her number over, and my wife’s iPhone would spring to life. The time – 7:04 PM.

To make a very long story short, my wife’s iPhone awoke from its number-porting-induced coma at around 9:30 AM on Saturday morning. To be fair, there were warnings during the activation process that porting could take anywhere from a couple of minutes to “several” hours. “Several” was fourteen for us. Apparently we were not alone.

Back to Friday night. About 8:30 PM, after my fears of porting delays were confirmed and my patience was beginning to wear thin, I decided I could easily learn a new AT&T phone number and started to activate my iPhone.

What a difference! In 15 minutes I was activated, had synced my iPhone with my MacBook Pro’s Address Book and Calendar, and Safari web browser bookmarks, and imported iTunes music and movies.