I picked up an iPhone on launch day. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with the sale in Sweden. The city I live in, Falun, has about 36,000 people and almost another 20,000 in surrounding area. Not very many people, but then the local market supports an authorized reseller, who also sells some PCs, that just became an authorized repair center. Plus the iPhone has more universal demand than to just Mac users. On Friday I got up and walked the dog through town and tried looking into the mall at the Telia store, but didn’t see anyone.
Back home to drop the dog off I took some time to message a friend who had been waiting in Arizona for a few hours already and still had hours to go. I walked over 5 to 10 minutes before the 10am open time and got in line. I ended up being 20th in line, the highest queue number I saw was 47 and there didn’t seem to be much worry that they were going to run out.
In Sweden you don’t pay for incoming texts or phone calls so I had survived my first year in Sweden with a 100 kroner (roughly $16) prepaid SIM card. Unfortunately I never registered the number as mine so they had to give me a new number then and make the transfer later on. The buying process was nice and short, about 5 minutes, though since once they had my person number they could instantly do the credit check, and pull my name and address up in the system.
While it’s tough to pass up on some of the Sony Ericsson phones, the iPhone has my heart. Plus I can dust off my Objective C and write applications for it. I wouldn’t ever care to subject myself to writing Java again. I was worried about how the developer program is setup with the app store, but then came the launch and the barrier to entry was obviously not high at all. That’s a good thing and a bad thing, good that I don’t have to worry about Apple turning me down on the merits of my applications, bad in that there is a lot of garbage to wade through.