Zoetrope

Of course every positive (unlocked iPhone) there's a negative. Especially in Belgium:

The first (local) Mobistar Center I visited did not have any phones in stock, and they advised me to deposit a down-payment to get on the waiting list. So I headed to the larger Mobistar Center in Hasselt, and arrived at 22-minutes after opening. Around 20 people were in a line and were told when they were waiting for the shop to open that they 'had enough iPhones to supply the line'.

So I waited in line, excited that they seemed to have enough stock. After 6 or 7 people got their iPhones, they announced that the 16Gb version was sold-out (especially the white ones). One or 2 people left the store, I guess they really wanted a white one.

Evidently when it was my turn to hand over my hard-earned cash, I had the last iPhone in the store. So they had a stock of 20 iPhones, and all the local Mobistar centers in my area had none.

Other people had an even worse experience: several Mobistar stores only sold iPhones to customers who also agreed to engage in a new Mobistar contract. Remember, this is absolutely illegal in Belgium. It's the reason they have to sell unlocked iPhones over here.

The official Mobistor policy was to no allow pre-orders, and sell the current stock on a first-come first-served basis, but it seems a more liberal policy was applied in some stores. Luckily the Mobistar Center in Hasselt had greate management.

At the night launch in Brussels they evidently had to turn away over 100 people because they ran out of phones:http://www.hbvl.be/nieuws/binnenland/default.asp?art={0BE76C37-4C93-425B-9F19-07A7DF19C0DB}

Anyway, I'm happy I can throw away my old phone and enjoy phone capabilities on top of all the other functionality. I've been using my iPod Touch more than my phone since I got it in January.

Some dutch links with some info about this sad day for those customers hoping to finally snatch a legal iPhone here in Belgium:

http://www.myiphone.be/content/view/298/38/

http://forum.onemorething.nl/viewtopic.php?p=1764908#1764908

Finally the time has come, the AppStore has launched. I've been running the 2.0 Beta OS ever since my application was accepted during Apple's WWDC. It included the AppStore but the content wasn't there.

After you upgrade to iTunes 7.7 you can browse the store on your Mac, or just do it on your device. Make sure to install Remote so you can navigate and control your iTunes library. Absolutely magnificent IMHO.

The current catalog of apps is really cool, lots of games and contains a lot of free apps. I'm not 100% sure, but it seems you can install (actually: sync) the apps you bought on any number of devices. I'll test that when I get myself the 3G iPhone tomorrow. Oh btw, for once us Belgians have something to envy: unlocked iPhones 3G (although 'expensive')!

The last few weeks I've been ramping up my Cocoa/iPhone development and I have to say that it's really fun. Cocoa has very, very mature API's and excellent design patterns (read: delegates/target-action/datasource) that make GUI programming for Mac OS X/iPhone a lot more fun than spitting thousands of JWhatever components in Swing.

Okay, now back to Xcode!