Like thousands of other customers this morning, I received this email from Apple:

Dear Apple Store Customer,

You recently received a Shipment Notification email from Apple advising you that your iPhone has shipped.

This email is to confirm that your delivery will occur on June 23rd. Although Apple and FedEx tracking information may currently indicate a later date, you can check the FedEx website the morning of the June 23rd to track your package to your doorstep.

In the event that you will not be available to accept delivery on June 23rd, it may be more convenient to use our pre-sign delivery option by visiting our Order Status website at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus.

Sincerely,

The Apple Store Team

I've read quite a few comments and theories about this and the one I believe the most is that Apple just wants to stagger the deliveries so not to overwhelm the activation process and AT&T's servers (again).

I've already switched my day off from Thursday to tomorrow (Apple would only ship to a billing address).

After 12 hours and 8 minutes, I finally had my order confirmation for my new iPhone 4 in my inbox on the evening of June 15th.

When I woke up at quarter of 6 Tuesday morning, I truly wasn't expecting the Apple Store to be up and ready to take iPhone 4 pre-orders. Here on the east coast, usually "new product Tuesdays" start with the Apple Store going down around 5-6am and then coming back up around 8-9am. This Tuesday however, Apple got a head start.

I completely expected the experience to be just as it was a year ago. When I pre-ordered my iPhone 3GS, it literally took 3 minutes from start to email confirmation. This year I would try about 4 DOZEN times throughout the day to place my pre-order for iPhone 4.

Everyone knows the story by now. Apple announced that they had more than 600,000 iPhone 4 pre-orders on Tuesday and apologized for order delays, time outs and server down times on behalf of themselves and AT&T. I suspect the majority of the blame should go to AT&T (as usual). The first coupe of steps on the Apple Store were fast and easy, but after the "new or existing customer" screen, the next step was to give my phone number, zip code and last 4 digits of my social security number. Then it would jump onto AT&T's servers to grab your account information. The majority of the time, that's when things shit the bed for me and I would start over.

The Apple Store iPhone app that Apple released earlier that day didn't help either. Most of the time, the app would completely crash after I put in my credentials for an existing customer. Then later on in the day, it would quickly jump to a screen where you could reserve one at a local brick and mortar Apple Store.

Around 6pm Tuesday I finally made it to the shopping cart only to find 3 other iPhones in the cart. I deleted all the old ones and completed my purchase information. About 45 minutes later I received the confirmation email form Apple.

Just in time too. Wednesday morning I check my RSS and Twitter feeds and it seems that the iPhone 4 pre-orders had slipped to a July 2nd shipping date. Then later on that afternoon, they slipped again to mid July.

I've read many theories as to why there were 10 times the pre-orders this year compared to last year. The one I believe the most is this year, AT&T gave an early upgrade to customers who purchased an iPhone 3GS 12 months ago instead of the standard 18 months. Last year, customers like me who wanted to upgrade to the 3GS had to fork over $399 (for 16GB) for the privilege. This year, it was $199 (plus an $18 upgrade fee).

Unfortunately, unlike last year, I wasn't able to have the iPhone 4 shipped to my work address where I will be during the day. AT&T would only ship to my billing address (home). So I did the only thing a loyal Apple customer would do. I took the whole day off.

My first four days with the iPad has opened my eyes to the potential of this device. Right now, very few apps take advantage of the full potential of the iPad.

Most were quickly “upgraded” from their iPhone versions so they would scale nicely on the larger iPad screen and be available at launch. Obviously, the best is yet to come. Now that developers have the actual device, rather than a simulator on a computer screen, I believe we are going to soon see some very deep, immersive, and useful applications in the near future.

Unlike the iPhone though, I believe the iPad can be much more than just a place to consume content. Right now, I’m typing this blog post on the virtual keyboard on the iPad. I’m VERY pleased with how fast I can type on this keyboard. At the correct angle, I can type just a fast as my real keyboard. And simple things like the double tap on the space bar for a period (like on the iPhone) help as well. I find myself double tapping my Mac keyboard all the time now expecting a period to appear.

Right now I’m DESPERATE for a true Facebook client for the iPad as well as a well thought out Twitter client. This size screen is perfect for a multiple column Twitter client like Tweetdeck. Although Tweetdeck is already available for the iPad, you can tell it’s first version was very quickly put together and wasn’t very well thought out. I hope a usable update comes along soon. For now I will stick with the single column Twitterific.

The potential is there for some truly remarkable, productive, change how you do things, iPad apps. They are coming, I can feel it. I just wish I had the patience to learn Objective-C because I would love to be part of this great platform and it’s future.

I love these quotes from Fraser Speirs’ blog post Future Shock:

Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get “real work” done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the “real work”.

It’s not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.

If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people’s perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with.

Can you imagine how much more brilliant content will be created when the iPad (and future devices like it) allow most everyone to actually enjoy creating rather than the computer getting in the way? The next 3-5 years are going to be something to behold