Your iPhone 4 Launch Plan – Stop being desperate, Avoid begging Best Buy employees

June 21, 2010 - By Justin E. Gehrke

Yesterday, tech news sites like Engadget published posts about the supposed leak of an iPhone launch manual from Best Buy. Much to the chagrin of many a desperate tech junkie, the manual contains very little in the way of actual useful information.

There were no surprising revelations. Actually, there was very little of interest at all, unless you’re planning a store’s product launch. What the manual and our interest in it does remind of us is something more important.

We are desperate. We have become so accustomed to the next big thing being available on the same day it is released that we are willing to camp out next to Chewbacca and Hans Solo, just to have an iPhone on the first day.

Then, companies like Apple did us a favor and gave us the chance to pre-order the next golden chalice. Did we fall for it? Of course we did. As soon as the clock struck midnight hundreds of thousands of Apple fanboys (and girls) began launching enough hits at Apple.com to constitute a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

This is the scenario we saw last week, with the iPhone 4 pre-order launch from AT&T. What began as a simple, exciting pre-order opportunity degenerated into a chaotic orgy of electronic gadgetry procurement. First Apple’s website couldn’t handle the load. Then, AT&T’s website began to crack under the ordering pressure. The next thing we knew, people’s user names were being revealed. Though AT&T insists the problem couldn’t be duplicated, I personally saw this myself while trying to pre-order.

The madness didn’t end there. The next day, AT&T announced it was suspending pre-orders indefinitely and cancelling employee discounts. In recent days, we’ve seen successful preorders cancelled based on the inability of AT&T to “authorize the transaction.”

All in all, the iPhone 4 launch has been a mess. So where does that leave us? That’s right, we’re combing through Best Buy launch guides for some nugget of information that will allow us to be the first in line, first to buy it and first to walk out the door. We are literally memorizing what Best Buy can’t even pay their employees to read.

I’ll admit it. I tried…for several excruciatingly long hours…to pre-order one. After a while, though, I grew tired. Why was I going to spend hours trying to get something on the first day. Of course, I still want it, but I can wait. That’s right. I said “wait.”

You remember that word. It’s the one we use when we can’t have something right now, but we know we will eventually. So, we just wait. We don’t kidnap and interrogate AT&T and Best Buy employees. We don’t beg those employees to help get us secretly added to the list. Finally, we don’t research launch manuals like zealots.

No, there is only one thing to do. We must wait patiently, with the security of knowing that, unlike people in Malaria-ridden parts of the world, no one will die for lack of being a recipient. Don’t worry. Apple will make millions of them. Everyone who wants (and can afford one) will get one. It might take a week or (emit gasp, here) even a month. In the end, we’ll get it, and, if you’re really a dedicated Tech Aficionado and not just a Me-First-Junkie, it will be just as sweet.