From a would-be iPhone 3G buyer in San Francisco:

Date: Jul 18, 2008 9:00 PM
Subject: apple store can kiss my ass

so i go to the chestnut street apple store at 10am this morning and they tell me they are sold out of 3g iphones after i checked their website last night. i'm like, how did you sell out at 10:01 am? and they said, we've been open for an hour! eh? their phone and website clearly details they open at 10am. wtf is going on? i felt like slaughtering them.

(Photo by Alex Choi)

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(Photo by Davity Dave)

A tipster snapped this late-night shot of Apple's Union Square store being overhauled. You — yes, you waiting in line with your old iPhone — send us photos of the results when the store opens at 10, willya? Separately, we've been told that Apple Store employees at the San Francisco flagship cut off would-be buyers who arrived after 5:30 p.m. Shoppers timed the morning line at 2.5 hours yesterday. That's even more time than I spend watching my BlackBerry reboot.

• At least 1 million iPhones sold over the first weekend (Apple)
• Cost to Apple: $174.33 parts plus $50 royalties for 8GB model; $16 more for 16GB model (iSuppli)
• Cost to consumers: $199 (8GB), $299 (16GB) (Apple)
• Cost to carriers: conservatively, $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB) (iSuppli)
• Profit per phone: $274.67 (8GB) and $358.67 (16GB)
• Models sold: 33% (8GB), 66% (16GB) (Piper Jaffray survey)

Nice. I called the manager whose name is listed at the bottom of the documents, and he told me that he had emailed the articles to his employees but in no way intended for them to copy them and hand them out to customers. Instead, they were meant to be used as talking points for getting sales in stores where the iPhone wasn't available.

It's understandable for a retail operation to try to get sales when what the customer came in for isn't available. What's less understandable is laughing at customers and handing this kind of thing out to try to discourage them from buying their carrier's flagship phone.

If there's anything that we can learn from this, it's this: AT&T won't ever have the unified face that Apple store employees do if they're going to have third party stands with third party phone lineups. Also, don't buy phones from stands in malls in New Jersey.

TIM THE IT GUY — Even an Apple Store employee called Friday's iPhone launch "Not very Apple-like". It would've been a lot shinier had Apple stuck to releasing only one complicated product at a time. But no, some marketing whiz decided to debut an all-new phone and upgrade the old phones on the same day. On top of that, Apple unveiled an applications store and also forced users of Apple's $99-a-year online email and sync .Mac accounts to self-migrate to a completely different platform — whether or not they were buying an iPhone. Here's why compared to previous Apple launches, Friday was one big mistake:

Unike most Apple products, none of Friday's new toys were simple retail boxes to be sold over the counter. Each required its own special technical prep -– carrier activation, a software upgrade, or a self-migration process. Apple failed Change Management 101: They scheduled too many logistics and IT changes for the same day, with each change performed before anxious customers' eyes. Any one of Friday's problems would've been defendable on its own. Instead, it seemed as if Apple were trying to disable as many customers as possible.

You never go into McDonald's and find they've got a new burger, plus an upgrade to the Quarter Pounder, plus a whole new kind of sugary drink all debuting on the same day. Mickey D's sticks to one rollout risk at a time, and lets everyone else get their Big Mac as usual. That's what added insult to injury: Apple's stores, nearly empty because they could handle only a few iPhone buyers at a time, were closed to customers who'd come to buy a laptop.

When the next-generation iPhone comes out, I hope they put aside the other new goodies for later. Release one change per week as a separate launch. That's what's frustrating: Friday's four-way fiasco could have been a month's worth of buzz.

(Photoillustration by Jackson West)

I hear this and it sounds familiar; A group of vegan activists began waiting in line a few days ago as a demonstration. The cute girl goes on: "Anyway, they all own Apple stock and he taught English in Japan for four years. He's a nut, but I like nuts." The guy: "You could do much better." People who wait hours in line for a phone: Odd. People who wait days in line for a phone, hitting on a cute Apple Store employee the whole time, eventually asking her out and getting a date for next Tuesday: Not so odd. Actually: kind of heroic.

Update: We have names and video. She's Teresa Wlasiuk and he's Daniel Bowman Simon. Here's how it went down (doesn't her giggle give it all away?):

As a former Apple Retail employee, this jibes with what I experienced. At my store, there were only a few full-time employees and most of us were part-time — mostly so Apple wouldn't have to pay us any benefits. That's right: Steve Jobs is a cheapskate. Even Starbucks gives part-time baristas health insurance. At least I got a discount — and a free iPod. Who needs healthcare?

(Photo by AP/Elise Amendola)

Or perhaps consumers should inform themselves about how they're spending their money. Best Buy is in the business of making money, not providing higher education to those who barely made it through grammar school. They aren't required to tell you that Amazon.com will sell you the exact same TV for cheaper, either. Would you expect a clerk making $9 an hour to give you detailed information about your legal rights? Would you expect them to even understand the subject? Why doesn't MassPIRG just raise money to mail free set-top boxes to everyone in the state? That seems easier. (Photo by AP/Ng Han Guan)

The Internet, thankfully, remained untouched by this shopping apocalypse. Online advertising behemoths Google and Microsoft say they haven't felt an oncoming recession at all. And even if there was one coming, Google cofounder Sergey Brin told analysts last week that Google would actually thrive in such a consumer belt-tightening environment. In hard times, consumers look for the best deals, and Google search provides them. Who does he expect to buy ads for "beans and rice" searches? Brin did not elaborate.

Going by Brin's theory, Wal-Mart should have done gangbusters. But no. The penny-pincher's paradise actually fared worse than most, growing 0.2 percent year over year.

(Photo by Cryostasis)