Ah, you’re still here. Great.

Yes, I did go to the AT&T store near me Friday morning. No, I didn’t wait in line (like I did last year). Infact, I got there about 30 minutes after the store opened and saw a line that was nearly twice the line I stood in when the original iPhone launched a year ago.

As I called various friends to catch up on their iPhone experiences, everyone had the same report: more people in line this time, the line moved slower and their store of choice ran out of phones sooner.

Sounds like a good launch for an Apple product. Plenty of interest. More people that expected. Taking orders for the next round of deliveries. All par for the course.

But blogs suggested another key point to this story: a tough day for Apple/AT&T. I lost track of the official answer to “does everyone need to have the phone registered in the store?” Some said yes, some said no, others said they did, but were told to just go home and do it themselves.

It wasn’t just the 3G iPhone, either. The 2.0 software was “found” ahead of its launch (by the way – its awesome – I already have found applications that are suddenly “must have’s” for my phone) and MobileMe has been plagued with startup problems. The brief bit I was able to get into MobileMe looked really impressive. I can certainly see the value of having all my contacts, calendars (home, work, subscription calendars, etc.), bookmarks, pictures, files, etc. all on-line.

And yet, access to MobileMe wasn’t given until I did an update in iTunes which allowed Safari to see the service. What?!?!

Regardless, it looks great but is clearly still having some difficulty. This morning, my RSS reader showed that there’s already an update required on my Mac for the service. Its been very un-Apple thus far.

Now, I’m chalking all this up to the fact that they’ve got a lot launching right now. But, as I reflect on the level of which I’m usually critical of Lotus/IBM for similar “growing pains” I felt compelled to take a moment and recognize the 3G iPhone and MobileMe situation for what it really has been in the last 24 hours: promising, but troubled through the early launch.