Picked up my 16GB black in the Apple store at Bluewater today. I have to say the actual purchase experience was very un-Apple. It involved:

- booting XP in VMWare on an iMac (because O2's registration websites don't work on Safari/FF)
- reading my credit card details to the sales assistant in the middle of the store
- multiple websites that have to be filled in (with the same details each time)
- the assistant running off repeatedly to a backroom to collect the printed out contracts etc
- the assistant having to run around finding out the passwords for the O2 websites, because they change regularly
- having young kids wander up and nearly close down the registration pages while the sales assistant was off trying to find another password
- having the O2 site say my credit check had been "referred" only for the sales assistant to ring O2, give my name/order number and then wait silently for 5 minutes before someone at the other end said it was approved

Thankfully my experience once I got the phone in my hands has been exactly the opposite, it works even better than expected. That isn't to say that it doesn't need a few extra features in some areas, but what it does do it does almost magically well. To me the UI is far better thought out than any other device (including PCs, Macs and assorted phones) out there.