With Nick hitting Auckland to take part in ‘first in the world’ coverage, the guys called me up to step back into the Gizmodo lair to cover the Sydney leg of the iPhone 3G launch action. This was before Optus said they were going at midnight, so at the time I thought it would be an early morning… not the all nighter it turned into.

Anyway, here’s a bunch of links to the resulting set of posts:
Optus queue over 200 strong with 1 hour to go
500 iPhones only at Optus Hunter St store
Brett Howell, #1 iPhone 3G owner in Australia
Meanwhile, outside Telstra…
It’s 2.00am on iPhone Friday and all is…
Any iPhone 3G you like, so long as it’s white
iPhone 3G Sydney queues status update (5.00am)
OFFICIAL Telstra iPhone 3G plans - mix and match, but still poor value
Apple Store selling phones / plans for all carriers
Telstra plays it simple, all business
Vodafone wins the iPhone celebrity appearance game
iPhone, iPhone, iPhone! Aaaand, I’m spent…

I got a good feel for the freaky folks out there queuing for iPhone 3G — I was out there too, after all (at least I was paid to be there). It was a a COLD night (especially by 5.00am), but spirits were high — even in the face of slow moving queues. There’s ceaseless streams of detailed coverage elsewhere, but I really wanted to point again to the treatment of customers in the queues.

Optus did a fantastic job of looking after the hundreds in their line well after the TV cameras and newspaper photographers had gone home. They had endless streams of hot chocolate and coffee being distributed, as well as water and snacks. They were even making cheeseburger runs to McDonald’s, and as morning approached it was wave after wave of bacon and egg rolls from a proper café.

The rest didn’t do anything for their (very small) queues until close to opening, but the real bad example was Telstra. It’s hard to be shocked, I guess, but having been out there all night like the devoted buyers, it was hard to watch three of the four retailers put more than a little effort into distributing some warm drinks and food while our ‘national provider’ failed to even communicate in a friendly fashion with anyone at all. For Telstra it was doors open at the stroke of 6.00am, no fan fare, no nothing. Sure, guys, get the job done. But in the middle of winter this all just looked so heartless.

A commenter at Gizmodo mentioned the Melbourne T[life] store was hooking up queuers with some coffee and snacks. So why on earth was Sydney being so weak?

Yeah, it’s been a while. Let’s call it evens and start again from here.