I bought the iPhone on Friday evening, eagerly awaiting activation. On Saturday I called activation support and was told to keep waiting. On Sunday, I called activation support and was told to keep waiting but make sure my iPhone was connected to iTunes at all times.

This morning I called, and the tech support person asked me a few questions. Then she said my account showed that AT&T needs more information from me, but she didn’t know what, and that there was another line I needed to call to take care of the problem. She also told me that line has a one hour wait. I called the other number, chose “iPhone Activation Status” and entered the order number I received via email, and then was told there would be a long wait. A few seconds later a support person connected, she asked me to confirm two numbers from the iPhone’s box, and the phone was activated a few minutes later. I have no idea what information they needed from me, since they already had the identification numbers associated with the phone.

I don’t know why this problem wasn’t caught the first two times I spoke with support.

Anyway, the iPhone is finally alive and kicking, but I haven’t had much chance to use it. I will say that the iPhone is as different from a regular cellular phone as the original Mac OS was from DOS. I haven’t used any of the smart phones that are available these days, so I can’t compare them with the iPhone.

In the course of dealing with these problems, I learned that the number for iPhone activation support is 877-777-4189, and the number to get your activation status (if you have already received your order number) is 877-800-3701, then option #2.

In addition to not being evil, Google also ought to try to avoid being completely lame. Is it evil to point out to the health care industry that you can sell them ads that may help thwart Michael Moore’s criticism? I don’t know, but it’s certainly not behavior to aspire to.

Apparently the secret to getting your iPhone activated as soon as possible is to leave it plugged into your computer and connected to iTunes until activation is complete. A support person from AT&T told me that the their system works by going through a queue and pinging every unactivated phone in turn to activate them. If the system can’t see your phone, you lose your place in the queue and have to wait for the next time.

Those of us trained by the iPod are in the habit of disconnecting from our computer once the sync is complete, but when it comes to iPhone activation don’t do that. Just plug in the dock and wait.

Bottom line, my phone still isn’t activated and it’s probably my fault. My own knowledge confounded me this time, since I was working under the assumption that when you plug your phone in it polls for activation info from AT&T. I kept power cycling it and disconnecting it from iTunes, and have an unactivated phone to show for it.

Update: This tip may work, but I had to call support again to get my phone activated.