Did you buy an iPhone3G this past weekend?  If so, were you among the hordes of people trapped in the horrendous lines at Apple Stores nationwide on Friday?  Apparently the global deluge of new handset activations combined with a simultaneous release of the much-anticipated iPhone 2.0 software that all six million current iPhone owners were trying to download crashed Apple’s iTunes servers, which were handling both tasks.

(Best headline snark: “The iPocalypse” – courtesy of Gizmodo.)

The media was awash with reports of the bungled launch, criticizing the company for shattering its own consumer-friendly mystique.  (examples here, here, and here)  Claims of Apple losing its lustre are overrated.  The problem was fixed by Saturday and weekend sales, upgrades, etc. went off without another hitch.  It’s surprisingly amateurish when a company that regularly schools its competition in the art of bringing consumer hype to freakish peaks didn’t plan for the added traffic of the launch day, but that fact alone could be the best indicator that the new, faster, cheaper iPhone had more heat at retail than even The Great Jobs anticipated.

Lesson learned: no company is perfect, even if its advertising is.

Update: Apple sold 1,000,000 of the new iPhones by Sunday (yesterday!).  It took them 2.5 months to accomplish the same feat with the first iPhone.