If you’re thinking about getting a new iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c you’re not alone. According to Apple they have sold an astounding 9 million iPhones since the release of the new iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c this past Friday.
9 million phones, just let that sink in for a minute. At their last release, the iPhone 5 in 2012, Apple sold 5 million in the first two months.
I wasn’t one of those 5 million iPhone 5 sales but I was two of this most recent release. I usually skip a generation and truth be told I was a little disappointed that they didn’t make the screen a little wider. I was seriously considering jumping ship and switching to the Galaxy S4. I know a few people who have this phone and love it. It’s wider, the icons and apps are larger and for my old eyes that is a wonderful thing. I actually went into my carrier’s store to look into the switch. Got so far as to choose a number and then realized that all my other Apple products will not sync seamlessly with it.
I didn’t want to spend extra time getting my phone connected to my other computing devices. With an iPhone I don’t have to do anything and I like that a lot.
I don’t camp out and wait in lines. I get there when I get there and if I have to wait in line that’s okay because it’s me time and I don’t get enough of that. On Friday morning I waited for my daughter’s bus to pick her up and then I went out to the Mall of America to see about getting a couple of new iPhones.
The night before the blessed event I put both my daughter’s iPhone 4 and my iPhone 4s on eBay. Before I received the confirmation both of them had sold. I had put them on a 3 day auction with a buy now option. I thought I had set the price high enough but I guess not. Now that I had sold our phones, and promised to ship them within 24 hours I had no choice but to wait in line with all the other Apple Fanboys and girls.
I don’t know what number I was but I would hazard a guess that there were a few hundred people in front of me. I wanted a gold iPhone 5s but apparently those are pretty popular and, I learned, most of them went to China. I was handed a card with Space Gray stamped on it. Not my first choice and not my second choice and if I hadn’t sold my phone I would have gotten out of the line and waited until more of the other colors were available. Luckily they had an iPhone 5c in blue which was my daughter’s first choice.
I waited and waited and read 8 chapters of Inferno by Dan Brown on my old phone.
I even got a call from my daughter’s school asking me to come and get her because she was sick but I was two behind the front of the line and there was no way I was getting out of it. She’d have to wait.
As I was waiting to be escorted into the Apple store by a genius a woman (wearing an Apple genius shirt) holding a handful of cards like the two I was given when I got in line, stood in front of me and asked if I had gotten the phone I wanted.
“Why no, no I did not get the phone I wanted”
“Which phone did you want?” She enquired.
“The gold one,” I said, and at that moment I knew I was getting a gold iPhone.
Apparently there were a few people who had changed their mind and given back their golden ticket. She politely asked me not to walk into the store and announce to everyone that I was getting a gold one, which I agreed to immediately.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t announce it because all the geniuses did. And, according to them they only started out with ten of the gold ones.
And I Got A Gold One!!!!
Nothing else really mattered after that. The phone is beautiful and iOS7 is awesome. Siri is better with even more witty repartee and the camera actually takes pictures that don’t turn everyone into a green eyed alien. Looking at webpages on the internet is like using my laptop on my high speed internet at home even if it is on a too small screen for anyone to actually be surfing the net.
Woohoo! You got a Gold iPhone! How serendipitous was that!? (Is that the right word?)
Gail and I were one of the 9 million. We called our local Verizon store on Thursday so our guy would place the order first thing on Friday. Gail’s Gold iPhone will take as much as a month to arrive, though the guy said probably much sooner. My choice was the Space Gray and should arrive today or tomorrow.
I, too am a Mac zombie. I have also bought a new iPhone every other year. I no longer like to wait in lines, but I did wait in a long line in 2007 when the very first iPhone came out. I’ve heard a lot of complaining about iOS7, but so far I like most of it and am getting used to all the new little things. I do think it is faster.
I so agree with you about the great advantage of having all my machines and software easily sync up. That is a huge part of the genius of Apple computers.
Have fun with the new toy! Happy for you! 🙂