Upon the release of the original iPhone, one million were sold in 74 days, though the immediate sellout of the first stock was inevitable. Was Apple better prepared for the sales this time?

On July 11th, when the new iPhone 3G hit Apple and AT&T store shelves across America, one million units were sold in the first weekend alone.

If conditions all around Maine and other parts of New England are any indicator of what’s happening across the nation….

For every happy new iPhone user, there are at least a few dozen others left out in the cold, still waiting for their new equipment.

At the Maine Mall AT&T store location in South Portland, Maine, a line stretched out dozens deep at six a.m. on July 11th.

Any customer wandering in on their lunch break with the hope of scoring a new iPhone was disappointed at best to be turned away with the hopeful promise of another delivery for the next morning.

By nine o’clock on the morning of Saturday, July 12th, the line outside the same AT&T store was already formed by over fifty eager customers, all told the same hopeful information the day before by the employees of the state’s largest/most prominent outlet for iPhones…..

By the time the doors opened at nine-thirty, everyone was beginning to fidget and wonder among themselves.

Would there be enough iPhones to go around?

And if not, when would an employee come out to tell everyone who had stood patiently in queue, in a a drawn-out, limbo-like state of “standby”?!

By ten o’clock, a store employee was making the rounds, letting everyone know that there were only, in fact, thirty iPhones all told — ten of which were the sixteen-gigabyte version.