This morning at 5:30am Apple opened the flood gates for pre-ordering the new iPhone4.  Unlike in previous releases of this game-changing product line you could reserve this one for pickup.  The reserving scheme started with the iPad release.  Also at 5:30am.

Needless to say, since it’s now 6:12am, I was up and reserved mine for pickup at my favorite out of the four on the island of Manhattan.  Which by the way is only 23 square miles in size.  And we need four Apple stores.  Well maybe not need in the Merriam-Webster dictionary sense.  But the stores are always packed.

Even hours before, none of the major Mac rumor sites knew any of the details of the pre-order.  What was needed to qualify or what models woud be available. Or that you would need an Apple ID to reserve. Yes, an Apple ID is required to make the reservation.  No money, just an Apple ID, your phone number and the last four digits of your Social Security Number.

Play-by-Play

Started hitting the site at 5:30am and the server was having some response issues.  Process was smooth. There has been some learning over the last three years. Also, I qualify for the $199.00 offer and my plan does not expire in 2010.  A worry I had after Steve Jobs’ Keynote when he mentioned the AT&T plan.

As you can see , the process is well defined.  They could have taken better care of the error page.  Something slight more attractive than Oops!.

In image Three and again in image Six that only the black version is available today. In image Eleven, you can only reserve one iPhone 4 per Apple ID.

Eligibility

I thought I was not going to be eligible because I had just upped my plan to get the 3GS last year and I was not due to expire until 2011.  This past June 8th, Chris Ziegler from Engadet posted:

AT&T’s made it pretty clear how this upgrade sitch is going to go down for existing customers moving to an iPhone 4 on the 24th of the month, but if you want to double-check and make sure you’re good to go (we can’t blame you), there’s an easy way that was briefly mentioned yesterday: dial *639# on your current phone. You’ll be returned a text message from AT&T detailing your situation — either you’ll be told you can get a full upgrade price (meaning $199 / $299 for the 16GB and 32GB, respectively) or you’ll be eligible at some particular date in the future. Not all’s lost in the latter case — you can still pay $200 more for the phone as an “early upgrade,” which is less than the no-commitment price of $599 / $699.

The Catch

Even after my adrenaline rush this morning, there is still no real guarantee that I will have the phone.  If you look at the fine print in image Twelve of the “confirmation” email I received it says, “Pre-authorization does not guarantee iPhone availability at an Apple Retail Store. iPhone is sold on a first-come, first-served basis”.  So in the end, is it really a reservation?

I attribute this solely to the fact the the PDF is being automatically generated on their side.  A server-side script that it writing the PDF using some sort of typeface that simply is not translating on Mac.  Question is, how many others out there are in this situation?

There are two solutions.  One is to export the PDF as a rasterized image such as a JPG.  The quality will be poor and the text blocky but the information will be readable by the attendant entering you into the database.  The other solution is to try to print to a different printer if possible as all Postscript printers occasionally do not translate live type correctly.

Do not be discouraged!  Keep trying!