There only a few things that will get me up at 3 AM. The two main reasons are A and T. They do that more times than I would like but overall they are great kids. Other things might include a flight that I really couldn’t get at any other time but first thing in the morning. Even then I would try to avoid it at all costs. Then of course there’s an Apple launch event. I’d be lying if I said I never got up at 3 AM before to order an apple device. In recent years I haven’t. Last year I wasn’t even sure if I wanted an iPhone 7. I opted to get one at the end of November. I wasn’t motivated enough to get up in the middle of the night then.
In previous instances of me getting up to order a phone (or a tablet) I was exceedingly frustrated. I would get up at 3 AM or one time 6 AM thinking I can still get ahead of the rush. My early morning attempts were semi failures due to technical problems with Apple systems. One time I spent 45 minutes trying to place an order only to go to bed and get up at 6 AM to try again. By then it was a month wait for the product. I might go back and troll my blog history to find out what product it was that i had that happen. I’m not too crazy, I don’t think. I only attempted this maybe twice before. I have waited out in the freezing cold for two hours for an iPad once. MC was dating at the time and she still decided to marry me. That’s how you know you have a winner.
Flash forward to this week and I had to think about if I wanted to get up early for this launch event. In the end I had sound reasons and motivation to do so. It boils down to my move overseas. We aim to move around the first week in January. That means if the constraints around supply chain for the new phone are anywhere near true, and they likely are I might not get my phone in time for my move. If anyone’s actually reading a technical post like this they might wonder why, or who cares? The answer is an iPhone cost the same in dollars as it would in pounds or close to it. That means to buy it in London it’s 30% more expensive due to conversion rates. Since I knew I wanted to buy the phone my option was to either get it before I go or pay the extra price. This phone is expensive enough so I wasn’t willing to pay more for it when I got there.
I decided that if I was not able to order the phone Friday morning and have it delivered in a reasonable time prior to the end of the year I would not get one. My alternative would be either to get an iPhone 8+ or simply stick with my 7+ until I’m back in the US for a while over the summer. The fact that the iPhone X is as thin as the iPhone 8 with a bigger screen than my current plus is so compelling for me to want it. I love the screen on my current 7+ however that phone is just way too big. Whenever I hold my work iPhone 6S it just feels more natural.
Thursday evening I told myself I was going to bed early, maybe before 9 PM. That never happened so I went to bed around 10:15 PM. I set my phone alarm. In order not to wake MCI also set my Fitbit silent alarm to go off a minute before my phone alarm. I was aggravated when the Fitbit said it was low on battery life. I took the chance that it would last until the next morning. It did. The silent alarm went off as expected and I was able to get up and turn off the phone alarm. I know I was successful when MC asked me when she woke up if I’d gotten up in the middle of the night to do my order.
I settled into my desk with my iPhone and iPad plus a web browser ready to go hoping to have one of them work quickly. I was ready to go about two minutes ahead of schedule. A few minutes after 3 AM Eastern time my iPad started working with their store app. My initial plan was to use my IPhone upgrade program. Oddly when I tried to do that from the iPad told me I needed to do it from my phone. The challenge was the phone wasn’t loading the app. I had thought about this and the upgrade program is nice however I don’t really need it. Set aside money each month for a tech fund for purchases just like this that I know I will want to make. Whenever I sell gear I put it in the fund also. Instead of using the upgrade program I simply bought the phone out right. I got my confirmation email at 3:08 AM. Within that eight minutes from when it launched I was told a delivery time of November 10 through the 17th. It officially launches on 4 November. I’m really wondering who is actually getting the phone on the fourth?
Since I did not use my upgrade program I will need to buy my iPhone 7+ outright and then sell it on eBay to recoup the costs. It’s a minor inconvenience however I did not want to mess around with switching to my phone and waiting for it to work.
I was back in bed around 3:10 AM. Unfortunately I had trouble sleeping since I was wide awake by that time. It felt like no time passed before 6 AM rolled around and I had to get up for my morning routine.
I think getting up at a ridiculously early hour to preorder something is for everybody? No course not. For me I am into technology that just works. This is something that I use constantly that’s always with me so I find it worthwhile to do what I did. I know many of my friends likely don’t understand it or don’t “get it”. And that’s okay. There’s also those friends who messaged me at 330 asking me how I did. Obviously they were also up trying to score one.
