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Activation Problems in iPhone Paradise
Thomas Hawk writes "Unfortunately it appears that some activations of Apple's new iPhone have gone badly. After waiting in line 36 hours I'm still unable to activate my phone. I'm documenting the AT&T circus call by call on my blog. I've had my hold calls dropped, been patched into other users unable to activate their phone instead of AT&T customer service reps, been told that my wife must get a new phone and that the family plan can't work for me. I've been told that the problem is that I'm not putting a new chip into my iPhone in the slot on the left side of my phone when no slot there exists. PR Blogger Steve Rubel has also been documenting his problems on his Twitterstream. According to an unscientific poll being conducted by Engadget about half of the people who bought iPhones have had activation trouble with about 38% of problems still unresolved." Even the folks at MacWorld weren't immune to these issues.
Activation problems? With the iPhone being hyped for a year?
Never saw it coming.
Especially since AT&T, a company known for shitty service, was given launch rights.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
(Eventually)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Keep in mind that AT&T is turning on more cell phone accounts at once than anyone has ever done in the history of the cell phone industry. iPhone sales have either hit a million units already, or they will by the end of the coming week. If they perform at 99.9%, that's still going to be a thousand people running into problems.
Everyone I know who's gotten one so far had it activated in a couple of minutes. The real story here is how smoothly it's going overall.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I am aware of the activation problems, especially after seeing this looooong thread on Apple's own forums. However, with regard to the engadget poll, I would be wary of its results-- there are many people who are "haters" of the Apple products, of the iPhone, etc, and I suspect many people who don't own iPhones are responding anyway saying they have activation problems, to skew the poll. My experience has been generally good.. bought 4 phones (I discussed yesterday), and three of them activated almost immediately. My primary phone, our biz dev guy's phone, our operations director.. no problem. The fourth, got the notorious "we need more time to complete this activation" (I was porting a second line, after porting my primary line from t-mobile). After about 12 hours, it started receiving texts, and within 24hrs it was ringing at the correct number. I called t-mobile tonight to cancel my service (40hr mark, or so) and they told me the second number has yet to fully release and to call back tomorrow to confirm it released and my service was fully cancelled.
I admit not to have much technical knowhow with respec to the inner workings of this process, but I don't imagine it's entirely any one aspect.. AT&T, Apple, etc. It's probably due to the slowness of every vendor involved (those releasing numbers, etc) and the sheer volume of registrations over the last 72hrs.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I don't get it. What's so damned special about the iPhone? Any other company puts out a device like this and I guarantee you there'd be very few people taking it up, and they'd be labelled suckers by the rest of us. However Apple does it and suddenly its cool. Honestly I have had crap luck with Apple products - even my Ipod and my fiancee's - the only personal Apple gear I've bought in 2 decades have been trouble. Her's had a scratched screen, mine has a temperamental click wheel. Without those flaws they'd be good but not spectacular for what they are.
/. I don't expect much.
I set up an eMac for work a few years back and in a month it was off back to the Apple shop because the mother board had just suddenly died cold. This was a rarely used but usually left on and idle developers test machine. I saw enough to tell you I hate the interface and sadly my new Vista laptop looks just like a damned Mac.
I've come to the conclusion that Apple is good at one thing: Hype that creates a fanatical following.
Mod as you will. This being
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Not because I hate Apple or AT&T ... but because I just went through the process of upgrading a seven-year-old phone (Sprint). And it was a pain in the ass. I went through customer support hell, inconsistent stories, runarounds, transfers ... I was thinking the whole time, "holy shit, people upgrade phones all the time, why the hell does this have to happen to me?"
... and I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one who has to go through a stressful activation process :-)
Well, as of this weekend, I completed the month-long process of upgrading
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
at&t seem to be quite out of it with regards to how their own systems work, to the point where they have to make things up (or make wild guesses) when they don't understand why it isn't working. So far there is at least one solution to work around at&t's incompetence, but there's no telling if it applies to your situation.
The Poll that Engadget had about the service problems was fairly badly put together. The only way to be able to see results is to vote first. For for all the people that don't even have iPhones, they had to choose 1 of the 3 options before they could see the results. Since there was no "I Don't have an iPhone" options, it severally screwed with the results.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Maybe some perspective is needed. Half of Slashdot sees the hand of God in the iPhone, and the other half wants it to fail miserably. But at the end of the day, it's still just a phone. If it makes calls and texts, then it's fine. Anything else is just window dressing (which admittedly is the main selling point for it).
I'd be more interested in hearing reviews/complaints after people have actually had the phone for a few weeks, as first impressions tend to be coloured by the owner's predisposition towards it.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Lesson: do not launch product that requires extensive customer service at the beginning of a weekend.
The general observation seems to be that activation from a cold start works OK, but anything that requires "number portability" from a previous account may be troublesome. That's no surprise; number portability is usually a mess, because the carriers don't want you to use that Government-mandated feature.
It's still not clear why activation should require a separate computer. Activation via iTunes might be a nice option if you already use iTunes, but it shouldn't be the main route. After all, the iPhone has its very own Internet connection.
The iPhone looks like a great piece of tech, and I might get one someday. But...
It seems like Slashdot has a greater and greater proportion of articles that relate to gadgets (stuff to buy), and fewer and fewer that are about tech developments, science, etc. I'm not bitching about Slashdot, but is it really the case that nerds have become merely watered-down gear-freaks, and no longer employ their mind in the pursuit of knowledge?
Please, oh true nerds, answer my rallying cry!
Maybe you shouldn't have hinged so much time an effort on a piece of hardware you could have easily gotten 1 week later. It's people like you that cause the problem, who do you think you are to complain about it?
Activation was a snap. Took about 3 minutes. Posting fromm iPhone. :)
Perhaps this has been explained elsewhere, but here seems as good a place as any for me to ask the question: How is Cingular/AT&T not being to be a disaster for Apple. Everyone I know who has had Cingular has been unhappy with their service. The majority end up switching to Verizon and become fairly satisfied.
I always felt Cingular made cell phone virtually unuseable. Has AT&T/Cingular massively improved their network in the past year? Is everyone going to end up thinking the iPhone is awful simply because their service is so bad? Am I missing something?
Thank you.
Early adopters hurt. Haven't you learned that by now?
I'm not trying to shift blame at all. I said myself that 25% of the phones I purchased had activation problems. But I don't posit that as evidence that 25% of *ALL* iphones have had activation problems. Look at the replied to my last three comments (which all got modded +5, btw), and you'll find the exact people i'm talking about who may have clicked "my phone is still unactivated!" when they don't even own one. (for the lazy, comments: here | here | here)
Replied to those comments, you'll see people who said they would laugh at me/whomever they saw on the street using an iPhone, people calling me stupid/dumb, calling those in lines "emo retards," calling those in line "suckers," etc. Now, most people who choose not to buy an iPhone just do so out of logical choice, and that's the extent of their involvement.. but there most definitely is a vocal minority that feels slighted by Apple.. I really don't know exactly why, but I can say for sure that when I spent $600 a piece on my unlocked Treos (as did many others a few years ago), I don't recall a sizable portion of people calling me retarded/dumb/etc. The fact is a lot of people online have some sort of irrational distaste for the iPhone, and for those that buy it. And I don't believe that 40% of the people who bought the phone so far are still without service (as noted in the poll). I suspect it's in the single digit percentile, which still sucks if you're in that group, but 40% it isn't. I even posted a link to the Apple discussion page that has hundreds if not thousands of relies from people with activation problems.. but Apple is quickly approaching the "million iPhones sold" mark, and I don't imagine that of those million there will be several hundred thousand that take 48+hrs to navigate an activation quagmire. But hey, maybe I'm just lucky in my experiences. Engadget even noted themselves that they've activated 6 iphones without any problems.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Thank you for describing the mental state of your average techno-addict. They're a pathetic lot; picking their noses, popping their zits, repeating Aquateen Hunger Force episodes verbatim and going around spending big bucks on pointless, over-hyped hardware that in a normal world would be paid about as much attention as a big-busted whore in a gay bar. But hey, where would the almost as pathetic investors be without these antisocial losers.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What did customers expect? Fool me once... It's both the customer's and Apple's fault for this one. Customers (including my girlfriend) has consistent bad service and customer service from Cingular (now ATT). It's confirmed in so many news articles. It must be some pretty big kickbacks from ATT that convinced Apple to work with them despite Apple knowing about impending customer service problems. Do you think a company that big (Apple) wouldn't research that beforehand and decide to look away, distance themselves from their carrier while going after the bigger margin? Duh..that's how business works. By buying this phone we are voting with our dollar saying...yeah we want more of this...subscribe and support this lousy service more! http://blogs.mercurynews.com/consumeractionline/20 05/06/worst_cell_phon.html
http://www.epinions.com/content_277319683716
When I got a regular old cell phone on the day that Cingular's network merged with AT&T, it took two days to get my phone up and running, and I had to get 3 new phone numbers. Then I was billed for changing phone numbers. They happily got rid of the charges, but thats just the way Cingular / AT&T are. Honestly, I'd avoid them like the plague except my girlfriend has cingular so we get free mobile to mobile. Oh yeah, the reception aint that great even at 5 bars. In another incident, a cingular rep. flat out lied about a plan that my girlfriend was signing up for, claiming it would be about 70 a month, and it ended up being over 400 a month. Again, with some calling that got straightened around.
So people new to at&t / cingular, now you know what your getting into.
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/01/two-possible-fixes- for-iphone-activation-problems/
After waiting for activation since Friday night, I came across this article, followed fix #2, and had an activated iphone 1/2 hour later.
The only person I know how bought an iPhone is already returning his. He finally did get the thing turned on and was dumbfounded at what a clunker it was. Outside of the usual pretty Apple icons the phone has all signs of being designed by people who have never used a cell before. The thing just doesn't feel right carrying around or talking on.
The only positive result was it allowed me to make fun of him for falling for the stupid iPhone hype.
We're the phone company, we don't have to.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
http://thomashawk.com/2007/07/hot-donkey-after-36
Ramen
AT&T only spends money to get new customers not to service the ones they have. The greatest threat to iPhone success will be that Apple depends on AT&T to provide service that people like. The iPhone can fail simply because AT&T sucks.
Read your own comment again to figure out who the real antisocial loser is. So people want to buy a toy - why the hell should that matter to you?
If it makes you feel better, I just wrote this from my new toy - so far it's been really intuitive to flame assholes like you...
Bloomberg quotes the number at 200k units for the first day.. 1800 stores at just under (averaging) 1000 units each, with another 72,000 units moved by AT&T stores. If you check the stock online right now on Apple's site, you'll see that around half of the stores are currently out of stock (90% of CA sold out). I can't say how many stores were restocked nationwide, by I know most California stores were restocked on Saturday for sure, and perhaps Sunday (i'm just guessing here, though). I don't think it's particularly unfair to assume 200k units for day one, 100k for day two, 50k for day three. At this point, as you said, I'm now pulling numbers out of my ass, but you don't have to develop a complex algorithm to see that there is still a lot of demand, and (if Apple has the stock) they can easily move 300k units this next week. JCR is even on my "enemies" list (apparently he's said some stuff before that I really didn't care for, haha, since I don't move many people to enemy status), but what he said here is perfectly fair IMO.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Posting this from my iPhone. I had trouble activating at first too. After waiting 10 hours I figured out that the problem was with transfering my old verizon phone number. I asked them to cancel the activation and started again with a new number -- went through immediately.
You cant do anything with the phone until its activated, no ipod, photos, nothing except calling 911. So the wait can be frustrating, and its very hard to get info out of ATT.
The iPhone has really fallen off the radar for everyone but Apple fans.
Wishing won't make it so, Mr. Ballmer.
It sounds like Apple is already starting to pawn off the marketplace thud of the iPhone
By "thud", do you mean the sound of the most successful consumer electronics product launch of all time? The iPhone's already set that record, even if they never sold another unit.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The activation problems are related to switching from competing services over the weekend.
The competition are dragging their heels in an attempt to dull the luster of the iPhone and retain customers as long as possible (it's the weekend).
talk about abuse of the tagging system. you guys are like 10 year olds.
I had to wait about 20 hours before mine was activated, and then another 12 hours or so before my number got ported over and incoming calls would go to the iPhone. No big deal. I thought the whole thing would take about 30 minutes, but it was really no big deal to wait a day and a half.
Well worth it. I'm a happy iPhone user. EDGE is bearable. Not great, but bearable.
I mean it doesn't have anything special or new that you can't find on any cell phone been out on the last 3 years. My 2nd cell phone is 3 years old and has camera, MP3 player, Internet, etc. Touch-screen phone also been around 2 years ago.
So what so special about this stupid phone anyway?
I guess that it's like the iPod which is the worse MP3 player ever been released but there're some stupid people that buying it.
Enough
I honestly dont give a fuck about the fucking iPhone anymore.
This endless blathering on has gone on quite long enough.
I dont care what some douche has to say on his twitchstream.
I dont care what an engadget unscientific poll has to say about it.
I dont care what MacWorld has to say about it.
I just fucking dont care anymore.
I'm sorry to troll, i really am, but this fucking circus is worse than any other hypefest we've had recently here.
Fucking knock it off.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
I absolutely hate AT&T. I have tmobile, and honestly of all the phone companies I've ever had land line or cell, they have been the best. I know people have had problems with them, they aren't perfect. But I don't know ANYONE who has had AT&T service and not had problems. I even called tmobile once because a certain strech of highway I drive on suddenly didn't have service anymore, they looked it up, found the problem and said they'd send techs out to fix it. Something had happened with some antennas in a snow storm, and it was kinda remote, but I drove past there at least 2-3 times a week, and I would drop my call right there and not have service for ~5 miles all of a sudden. 2 days after I called, back up and working. I called back and they were open and explained everything that had happened, and thanks for calling to report the problem cause they might not have found it without my call... It was nice. AT&T's response would be something like "FU, pay your bill, we never said it would work there"
I don't know why Apple chose AT&t for this thing, that is the stupidest move they could have made. It'd be like taking a Ferarri out to baja. (IE, really fast car, completely unsuitable roads). AT&T has the worst of everything, crappy slow non-3g network, crappy customer service, horrible attitude towards customers.
They at least could have partnered with someone with a decent network (verizon) or decent customer service (tmobile). This whole 5 years exclusive deal with AT&T is (for me) and should be (for everyone) the death of the iPhone.
I'm ptsonig tihs form my iPnhoe, and I'm gald to say taht I've had no porblmes wsoeavrthr!
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
sure, my phone has mp3, internet and camera on it...
The number 1 thing I would like about the iphone is the full internet browser. I can't stand the stupid "mobile" versions of websites that I get on my phone, they are impossible to navigate, and 99% of the time don't even have 10% of the content of the real site.
It's a complete pain. Hence my phone browsing is limited to a) stock quotes, b) movie times, c) sports scores
Anything more than that, and my phone is useless.
Also, my phone has 128MB of storage for MP3's and pictures combined.... that's about 10-15 songs and maybe 20-30 pictures... as a "media" device it is useless. And there isn't a single phone out there that you can store and play back an entire movie except the iPhone.
So there are 2 brand new things:
1) Full complete internet browser
2) storage and playback of complete movies
With engaget reporting 38%, reuters is reporting 2% are having problems..
s .yahoo.com%2Fs%2Fnm%2F20070702%2Ftc_nm%2Fapple_dc_ 1&t=1183358102
http://www.macrumors.com/c.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnew
with tags like "Haha" and "Awesome" on this story,
It's not hard to see where the bias is.
when you stand in line for 36 hours for a 1st gen hype machine - don't be surprised it doesn't work. sounds like total apple-blackmail that story with at&t exclusivity.....
You, jcr, are fantastic at making up the most fantastic statements with utterly zero evidence to support your point. You admitted yourself you have NO IDEA how many units have been sold ("they've sold a million units already. or they will have in a week." huh?!?), but you've decided they've set a record for the most product sold.
Wow. If you weren't busy telling everyone that you work(ed) for Apple, it wouldn't be at all hard to guess.
utterly zero evidence
I look forward to you eating your words in a day or so, when Apple announces the millionth sale of an iPhone.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Perhaps this has been explained elsewhere, but here seems as good a place as any for me to ask the question: How is Cingular/AT&T not being to be a disaster for Apple.
Because we hate all cell carriers. We expect to hate the cell carrier.
After activation is complete though, we don't really have to talk to the cell-phone carrier. Then we just have the phone experience, which is great. That's when cell service may start to arise as an issue, but we've also been trained to accept that as a fact of life.
One thing Apple did well right off the bat is to not have to have us activate at the store, already a better expereince for most people despite the problems some are having. I myself am porting a T-Mobile number - while the number itself is not yet ported (and may take days more as T-Mobile apparently ports pay-as-you-go numbers by hand) the actual activation of my phone worked just fine, and I was abe to make calls and otherwise use the device almost instantly - it's only incoming calls and SMS I can't get just yet.
Frankly I expect a lot of issues to vanish Monday, when the regular people get to work instead of the poor weekend shift.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
thats the bait...
fuck you.
now thats a flame.
not a single point made was in my original post was without merit or in fits definition of a flame bait, if anything, i i defused the bait i replied to.
I think it's unfair to say what AT&T would have done, when you never actually called them.
I have had a T-Mobile pay-as-you-go account for about a year now. Service quality is OK, but not great. However your support experience does not extend to my dealings with them - when I first got the phone I was trying to make a call to T-Mobile to buy the initial minutes for my phone, and they kept dropping me - the most frustrating experience I have ever had via phone. On the tail end, I'm trying to port my phone number from T-Mobile to the iPhone. I called T-Mobile support to find my account number and password (having no monthly bill, I had no easy way to find my account number which turned out just to be my phone number). T-Mobile was able to give me my account number (though they were more icy when I said I needed it for a transfer) and said I had no password on my account. WRONG! In fact the number port failed for that reason. Now AT&T has the correct password for the account, but says that T-Mobile may take up to four days(!) to port the number as they port pay-as-you-go phones by hand. Sure enough, days later incoming calls go to my old phone (though I can happily use the iPhone for outbound calls and all other features, better than some people have been able to do). I found the AT&T tech I taked to about the port to be very kind, and she also made sure my phone actually activated which was nice since I hadn't even asked about that. And it wasn't someone in India either, it was some nice southern woman.
I personally wouldn't go lauding any phone company, since al of them can be horrible to use from time to time. But neither would I assume the worst about any company since it's almost always more about an individual you talk to than the company itself.
On top of that all all the people wth problems today are working through the second-string guys that have to work the weekend. Let's see how AT&T fares when Monday rolls around and everyone is back in to help.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A financial analyst at Piper Jaffray published this morning an estimate quoted on cNet: 500,000 iPhones sold by close of business on Sunday. If this estimate is even close to the actual number, then it is amazing that my new iPhone and many others have activated and worked without a hitch. EDGE network has been running well. I am very satisfied with both the Apple hardware and AT&T service so far.
Mod parent up.
The killer app of the iPhone is undoubtedly the proper browser. That is the only reason I'd buy one.
kill all the fucking niggers
Anyone that waited 36 hours in line without doing a modicum of research to find out that most Apple products tend to have a grace period in terms of being glitchy as all get out - and that Apple doesn't give a fuck about your problems, they have your money already - and basically doing it to be the cool kid on their block... they deserve what they got, and I hope the fuckers never work.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
The software is just a front-end on a very old, and established process - which you find if you have to make support calls because you run into issues.
I'd say problems are a lot more about launching just before a weekend, than anything else - Apple should have launched Monday. If you want to fault Apple, fault them for just having to make that June deadline.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've noticed this too over the last 5 years or so in the UK. People are starting to call themselves geeks, when they're really just gadget addicts with plenty of spare cash (or as we say here "more money than sense"). And you know what? Like any other addict, they're not satisfied. They're buying multiple phones, multiple cameras, multiple GPSs, multiple PDAs, PER YEAR.
It's not normal. But it's OK. What ISN'T OK is the gross assumption that anyone / everyone with a clue about technology will automatically follow the herd. We are - if anything - individuals. And what has happened with the iPhone and the Apple Religion in general cuts across that: like most religions, it has polarized society. So it becomes difficult to remain objective because all the time you've got these True Believers shoving things at you and going "WORSHIP MY NEW SHINY TOY". It's called materialism, and it used to be considered shallow. I still do, and I suspect I'm not alone.
"The iPhone can fail simply because AT&T sucks."
But then again, The Personal Computer didn't fail because Windows sucks. People are stupid, and they'll no doubt buy an iPhone no matter how badly AT&T screws them over.
Reuters had estimated slightly shy of 200,000 units as of Sunday. Now, of course, you've got the connections inside Apple. They're a news agency making estimates, but I'm sure they have their contacts too, if not at Apple, with AT&T.
So, we'll see.
But if they've sold a million units - then I'll say I'm wrong.
Because you're still not actually providing evidence for your claims, you're just saying "You'll see".
I completely agree. This morning I opened my usual morning batch of sites, among them CNet, and what do I see? 50% of the articles are about this freaking iPhone. :-/
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I believe you're mistaken in one respect. I can store and play back an entire movie on my Treo. It has an SD slot, and you can get SD cards in capacities as large as 8 GB.
-- Andyvan
But you said they'd already sold a million units
Look back in the thread. I said they may have done so already, and if not then that they'd hit that mark by the end of the week.
But now you're saying it's "a day or so".
A day or so until the announcement. Try reading before you flame.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So they'd sit on the announcement for a couple of days? For what possible reason? The iPhone is very well hyped and a big subject in the mainstream media. If they'd already sold a million units (or near, whatever), they'd know well in advance, and that press release would be out that moment, if not before, embargoed til the estimated time. They're not going to hit that mark and then sit on that release for any time at all, there's no sense in doing so.
TFA says it took 36 hours, but he's all sorted out.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Brand new product fails to have flawless launch. Film at eleven on The No Fucking Kidding News Network.
If you think full internet browsing on mobile devices is a brand new thing, you need to need your head out of your ass and take a better look around.
I am having activation problems. The incompetent fools at AT&T screwed up my profile for a 27+ hours, about 13 hours after I signed up for iTunes. I've spent hours on the phone with them and I've finally reached an impasse. My phone number starts with area code 914 because I lived in Westchester County when I first got a cell phone 7 years ago. Westchester is about 20 miles N of Manhattan. I live in Brooklyn now. AT&T is telling me that porting is going to be impossible unless I set my "home" address to something in Westchester. Of course, I don't know anyone up there any more. My other alternative is to get a brand new number, forward my calls until this is resolved, and then port my number whenever things clear up. Either way, AT&T's advice is "we can help you get this working by subverting our billing system". (!) My motivation for not taking this route is simple: cell providers can't handle the simplest of details without completely screwing them up, what confidence do I have that I'll even be able to fix my address or port my number in any reasonable amount of time? I can't imagine how many years I'd be dealing with the aftermath of playing games with their billing system _this_ weekend.
I went to the Apple store on 5th ave this evening to bitch, which was cathartic. The person who I spoke to couldn't actually FIX the problem (and I frankly wasn't expecting them to), but was able to sympathize and he vigorously agreed with my frustrations and added a bunch of his own. He told me that their VP of Retail was actually on their store floor at 5 in the morning Sunday and that Apple were very, very aware of how much of a debacle this has been. I enjoy Apple products and have been eagerly awaiting a cell phone that isn't entirely awful, but this whole experience has been quite a bitter pill to swallow.
"And there isn't a single phone out there that you can store and play back an entire movie except the iPhone."
Except for every single pocket pc phone ever made. I have 2 gigs of storage, which is on the low end. 8gb cards are coming out next year, 4gb cards are already out.
I agree on the browser though. I hope someone ports safari to wm6.
What planet is someone on that they are silly enough to wait in line for 36 hours???? For a phone!! Didn't they have a phone already? Or am I getting too old to appreciate neat new gadgets? All I can think is Get. A. Life.
The asshole giving this an Insightful needs to be shot. Repeatedly.
And you need to use an iPhone.
Jesus, are you just going to jump down my throat for everything I say? Take a fucking pill and chill out.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You know, sometimes I wonder why so many people who are looking at a page about having problems with iPhone activation report having problems.
But then I remember how inaccurate non-randomly sampled surveys can be.
And I see real gems like this one in the comments section:
"Well, I sent in a fake vote to see what the percentages were (and since there wasn't a place for "AT&T store sold out before I got inside" I chose still having problems and pissed...of course the store only got about 30 iPhones total)"
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
If the above post isn't an example of efficient, "economic" use of language, I don't know what is.
Clear, concise, and strikes to the heart of the matter. This is a 5 post if I ever saw one (unlike the multi-page psychobabble that usually gets modded up)
I don't know about shitty but it is kind of expected that all the wireless providers will have the same level of service as 95% of US providers (by customer base) use the same software to run their systems - Amdocs Ensemble. So it all works the same way. The only difference is in marketing and how big a smile you get at their stores. Even the CRM runs on AMDOCS Clarify so all the call center reps are working from the same script.
**Life is too short to be serious**
There's an easy fix for this, just buy Nokia N95 and enjoy. HTH.
My Nokia N70 has a full browser...
/. frontpage) sometimes render correctly, sometimes incorrectly; images may suddenly start loading when configured not to; drop-down menus sometimes work and sometimes not, so you end up selecting again; it's overall terribly slow; you can't change/disable the uppermost numpad shortcuts (1, 2, 3) where you accidentally hit them the most; focus doesn't correctly follow textbox cursor, so you start typing blindly if you go correct a word; et cetera. I know it's upgradable, though, just haven't got around to checking about that.
But unfortunately the Opera variant on said model is a PITA to use. Pages (such as
Somehow I'm ready to believe from past Apple experience that I wouldn't have these kind of inconveniences with the iPhone.
Wait. Gay people get free phones? I need to get in on this!
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
It just that most of the geek that were around in the past have grown up, got jobs, earned money. Some of them even... gasp... married.
Their interests have shifted, and today they have less time to spend on some things that kept the up the whole night before. Buying gadgets instead of building them is the "geekness" of 40 years-olds. They're still outside the norm compared to their peers - who all think "why does he spend so much time and money on... toys ?". But It has nothing to do anymore with the usual homebrew spirit of the typical younger geek.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
if they don't want to enter a poll about it, that's not the problem of the poll or the people who are having problems, is it? And how many tech nerds will buy the apple iPhone ($600 is enough to buy a computer ferchrissakes)? I suggest that tech-nerds are the number-1 market segment.
> My Nokia N70 has a full browser...
I don't think you can call the N70's browser a full browser. It's not bad, but it ain't good either.
However, all S60 3rd Edition phones have a full browser (either pre-installed or via download), and it's based off the same code as Safari. 3rd edition phones have been available for over a year, I'd guess.
Max.
Try any S60 3rd edition phone. They have a full browser too - it's even based off the same code as Safari.
..oh, and 8GB and 4GB is pretty decent sized memory too, though some other devices that can take sizable flash cards too (and removable is an advantage, IMO). ..but no, web browsers are old new to most of the world. I've been using a decent one on my Nokia 3250 for several months.
The only reasons I can see for getting an iPhone are the UI and style - not to say that those aren't good reasons.
I guess some might value the voice mail thing too, but I haven't heard anything about that yet.
Max.
sack a duck? I don't get it.
> Except for every single pocket pc phone ever made.
I wonder if the h/w will support it though. I say this because most Nokia phones have SD slots, and so can theoretically take the bigger SD cards, but Nokia still list them as 'up to 2GB'. Have you tried a card bigger than 2GB?
> I agree on the browser though.
Well, Nokia S60 3rd edition devices have a decent browser (based on Web Kit too), so the iPhone isn't special in that respect (either?).
Max.
Given that Apple have sold a million iPhones (give or take), and that the typical failure rate within warranty for your average consumer electronics is 5%, and that the vast majority of these failures occurs within the first few days according to the bathtub model (where the other vast majority of failures will occur after the warranty has expired), we should have seen 20,000 - 40,000 dead iPhones by now. Never mind having activation issues that seem to stem from number portability implementation issues in many cases.
Not a peep.
So either Apple's hardware reliability is good with a failure rate more like 1%, or they're covering it up well, or it's just not quite old enough yet to get statistics for failure (give it a few weeks). Or it will be a product that bucks the bathtub model, like the XBox360 where failures start occurring some time into the product's lifespan (but these types of failures are usually stress or environmental (heat) in nature than component, I imagine).
From this article..
"I can't think of another product launch that has been like this. When we went into the store I was almost moved to tears, it just made you feel really special."
"Nothing matches this - it's like going to a rock concert. As I went down the stairs in the store I was thinking 'this is what Sting feels'."
"It feels great, oh my God, overwhelming. I never thought this day would come - and now it finally has, it's mind-blowing,"
"I'm going to run home and ring people just to say 'Guess what, I've got an iPhone, bye!"
You SAD, SAD, HORRIBLE, PATHETIC people..
It's just a phone!!
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
*prints this /. article out and puts it through the shredder*
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I bought one...
seriously only a dumb monkey couldnt register it
Download new itunes
plug phone into dock
wait for apple servers to register phone( i think this is where most people are having problems)
done...
real friggin hard....
No cards to mess with
the family plan works...I did it...its broken down all barney style
do you have an existing family plan? yes or no?
do you want to use it still? yes or no?
then add this unlimited data plan and your good...confirm or deny
done...
N70 does have a full browser if you count the latest offerings by Opera, which basically work on an S60 platform including my N-Gage.. yes I own an N-Gage.. nothing like it will ever come again... most probably like the iPhone if they don't improve the product with the European release.
Two days after the iPhone went on sale somebody lost
theirs in the local K-Mart parking lot. One of the
K-mart employees turned one in to the manager after he
found it lying on the pavement in the parking lot.
Must be one real upset dude out there!
http://www.macrumors.com/2007/05/07/atandt-brandin g-iphone-and-revenue-sharing/ talks about a rumour that Apple demanded a share of monthly AT&T revenues from iPhone subscribers, and is getting this - apparently Verizon refused this.
Not too surprising then that the iPhone is locked to AT&T, despite it being sold without subsidy - possibly the only GSM phone ever sold at full price while remaining locked, which is a nice earner for Apple but really doesn't help customers. Anyone who travels outside the US will soon realise the pain of not being able to swap in a cheaper GSM SIM card (just a few dollars for prepaid accounts in most countries) to make cheaper calls outside the US...
just so you know, moron. no one gives a damn about you and your expensive fashion statement. it serves you right to suffer.
I'm not surprised. Not saying this because I anticipated a lot of problems, just that with any product there will always be problems be it software, hardware or that the widget just doesn't work.
As a student, I've worked in Customer Service before for a big carrier/media company (not AT&T) and know others who have worked similar roles for other companies (again not AT&T). With the companies that my friends and I are familiar with, the general emphasis has always been on providing great service. Its not that the CSRs aren't trying to do a good job but of the ones who do a really bad job (like you'd write an article about) they tend to be the real sticklers for company policy (on the *excessive* side) which I don't think any manager would support or frankly, they aren't all that smart. Most of these companies pay out fairly hefty bonuses or commissions so that there's a real incentive to keep customers and provide great service. I was making close to $50k with bonuses in under a year - full time. (Yeah, this might explain the service charges!).
YES! The NGage, 700w, and Neo1973 are all appropriately drab examples of chesthairy mobile phones for the true man's man every anti-pansy yearns to be, while the pinko iPhone is but a mere trinket from the plastic bubbles of the 25 cent dispensers we remember from childhood. Gentle, flimsy, and feminine fashion apparel serving as a status symbol of your flaming homosexuality. If you aren't gay but are looking to prove your manhood to a /. poster, then a true geek would seek out the most rugged and emotionless piece of (preferably, Microsoft Vista Mobile-gilded) hardware they could find in the back alleys of south central Los Angeles where the men are men and the sheep daintily clasp iPhones.
Haha!
Switching can be difficult, but not nearly as bad as getting out of a cell phone contract!
I am not a crackpot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and _doubt
Can anyone explain to me what the hype is all about? As far as I understand this is a phone with the functionality mostly equal to any other phone on the market, the main difference being the input interface; a comparably large touchscreen. While I could see its appeal for certain people (the usual suspects) I can't quite grasp what the actual hype is all about. Was it the amount of advertising?
I think it will take longer. There will have been a rush on Friday and then lots of sales on Saturday. Huge numbers of people buy phones on Saturdays, less on weekdays.
Just buy a cheap GSM off eBay for travel internationally. That's what I did. No problem...
What I think is funny, and I am sure that someone has said it already.
Verizon and Sprint had a shot at the Iphone first. They were just greedy and wanted more profit from the sales of it. Not really surprising.
I generally wait on getting Apple stuff until the first $100 service pack. It's generally not ready for prime time until then.
I'm so happy when people who buy over-hyped products have this kind of trouble. Eat it! How do you like your stupid phone now, you gullible, acquisitive, shallow, pathetic trend-slaves?
A bunch of years ago, T-Mobile and Danger launched the Sidekick. A friend from college had worked for Danger for awhile, and had gotten our circle of geeks really hyped about it. So I ponied up the cash and got one, even though I really only needed a phone.
It was a cool gadget. It was awful as a phone, both in terms of reception and in form factor. Holding the equivalent of a bar of soap to your head was bad enough, but then there were all the dropped or missed calls. It got bad enough that I called T-Moblie service.
There were no options for the Sidekick in their routing tree for customer service, and every agent I'd gotten connected to kept transferring me, as they had never heard of the Sidekick or had heard of it but didn't know what to do with it. They were totally unprepared, and this was more than a month after the launch. Eventually the answer was "yeah, we're working on that".
A year or two later, I fell for it again and bought a color sidekick, having been told that the guts of the xmit/recv phone parts had been totally replaced. They might have been, but they still sucked. This was in Chicago, where I'd expect their coverage to be top-notch. Still no help from T-Mo service. They at least knew what the Sidekick was, but the response on the phone was "oh, you have one of THOSE, okay..." Eventually the thing died, unable to read it's SIM or a new one. I found out it died a week after the warranty expired, T-Mo wanted $150 to replace it with a refurb.
Lesson learned: No more T-Mobile and no more sidekicks. May they wither into Newton-ness.
That is what you get for rushing out to buy one like it's your new kidney dialysis machine. Everyone knows that it's not a good idea to buy electronics immediately after they are released, but for some reason people still do it. I will think about getting one when all the problems are fixed and they come out with a better model.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
The asshole giving this an Insightful needs to be shot. Repeatedly.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Dear Thomas Hawk and company,
c _1p ple_iphone_90;_ylt=ArycuuFKJIhY5imH9_VUUxhU.3QA
Are you sure you don't have a short position in AAPL, or have some other interest in spreading FUD around? Associated Press and Reuters are reporting that only about 2% of iPhone activations went "less than perfect":
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070702/tc_nm/apple_d
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070702/ap_on_hi_te/a
Why should anyone believe your story is significant or represents more than one of unlucky 2%? 500,000 phones were probably sold. It's reasonable to say that 2% "less than perfect" experiences on anything on such a huge consumer demand scale would be considered rather successful. Let's put this in perspective.
They closed the stores for 4 friggin' hours, and made people line up for it. If they had started selling the phones at start of business Friday, there would have been some small overnight lines from the insane people, but there would have been almost no lineups at all. They (Apple and AT&T) 'manufactured' the lines to increase the hype.
Thank goodness the FCC has ensured that there is plenty of competition in the industry!
That's not true for this GSM phone, or any other GSM phone sold in the US. Unlike in Europe, where such practice is illegal, the US cell phone carrier lock their phones to their SIMS. You can't used a AT&T GSM phone on the T-Mobile network, or vice versa UNLESS you manage to convince the provider to unlock your phone (or in the alternative, find a way to unlock it, usually for a fee, from the internet). The justification for this practice is that phones are heavily subsidized by the carrier in the US (you pay a small fraction of the actual cost of the phone). The justification for the iPhone (for which you pay FULL price) is that Apple is too greedy?
The other thing the SIM thing is good for in the US is to switch phone within the same company. i.e. my wife and I are both with T-Mobile, and we decide to switch phone (and keep our respective numbers).
I think it was "sock a deck" - though that's gonna hurt your hand.
I'm supposed to get an iPhone for that? sweet.
Frankly I expect a lot of issues to vanish Monday, when the regular people get to work instead of the poor weekend shift.
So they would have done better, back when they announced Jun 29th, to say "Well, we can't quite make June, we'll release on July 2nd" instead of having the release after normal working hours on a Friday?
There's nothing like the smell of first-wave fansumers' shattered hope in the morning..
I don't understand the people who waited in line for so long to get the iPhone. On Saturday, the day after the launch, I went to my local Apple Store to buy something for my Mac. The store was busy, but not more than usual. While I was getting rung up, I noticed the huuuuuuuuge stack of iPhones on the desk behind the counter. I asked if those were iPhones that people had reserved, or could you just buy one.
He said these were iPhones that you could buy, and did I want to buy an iPhone today?
So why did you wait in line for 36 hours, when you could have gone to an Apple Store (mine is in Roseville, MN) and picked one up the following day? I just don't get the people who waited in line for this.
when you hand the reins for your product's service over to the number one, shittiest cell service provider in North America. I won't regale you with my AT&T/Cingular horror stories here, but suffice it to say that I will NEVER directly do business with them ever again. Verizon has been flawless in both customer service and cellular service execution. It sucks when my favorite company ties the knot with quite possibly my least favorite company. No iPhone for me until other providers sign up with Apple.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
I got my phone on Sunday and took it home to activate. I got the dreaded "Your phone requires more time to activate". That sucked! I waited about 3 hours and still nothing. The worst part of it all is that it immediately stopped service on my old phone (I was an existing AT&T customer) so I had no phone at that time.
After reading about people waiting 24+ hours I got nervous so I called the AT&T iPhone Activation Hotline, selected the option "Check Status on your activation". I was on hold about 20 minutes, a very nice man answered and immediately proceeded to activate my phone. I asked him what the problem was, he told me since I was originally a Cingular customer (who is now merged with AT&T) my account had to be manually activated and since I called he did it right then instead of waiting god knows how long.
Anyway, I think if you call make sure you call the iPhone number at AT&T, the regular AT&T customer service has absolutely no idea what do to. I think that is major problem a lot of people are having when calling AT&T.
Steve needs faithful followers, truly dedicated to Apple's world-changing mission. He doesn't need fair-weathered followers, who criticize him or his wonderful products.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
(Form cnn, "Estimate puts iPhone sales at 500,000 in opening weekend".)
What are the chances that you could someday have your iPhone, and buy from some carrier just an unlimited data plan, no voice. And then use a voice-over-ip service such as Skype as your primary voice provider. How much hacking would this take, and does any carrier provide data service without voice. What are you up against if you are sick of minutes, text message plans and this is your goal?
Yeah, it sure is upsetting to see people enjoying themselves. The ability to find fun in everyday things, that's the sure sign of a loser. From now on, I'll just reserve all of my excitement until I win the lottery, is that something exciting enough that you'll approve me being happy about it?
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I would add Visual Voicemail to that list. It's one of those things I'm amazed hasn't been done already, to be honest.
Yes, that is my thinking. I'm sure AT&T kept extra staff around the weekend, but it's just not the same as a fully staffed work day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your misuse of your anecdotal experience is a logical fallacy. It's unfortunate for you that you've had problems activating a few iPhone. However, every single report of experiences with iPhone activation that I can personally verify had no trouble at all, or minimal trouble which was easily overcome. You see, my anecdotal evidence simply doesn't match yours. Perhaps you are an outlier case. The sample does not include random reports posted to Slashdot by Anonymous Cowards, who, for all I know might well be paid by someone (Verizon? Microsoft?) or otherwise motivated to trash talk iPhone (a deep seated loathing for Steve Jobs because he once fired you?) or to pollute discussion forums when iPhone is the topic (stuck using a Motorola RAZR with hobbled bluetooth on a Verizon contract for another year?) or to preach the controversy to generate traffic and revenue (Engadget? Slashdot?). No serious problems *at all* were observed in the sample that I can verify. That suggests to me that perhaps the journalist isn't just parroting lies and the problem rate is actually relatively low.
"OMG! Somebody had trouble registering their iPhone!!!" is only one of many examples at Slashdot where it is clear that the participants in the discussion could benefit from an improved understanding of basic logic and basic statistics.
You might enjoy watching this short video clip of Michael Shermer @ TED where he says, "In science, we have to keep track of the misses, not just the hits." He has a marvelous example here of priming our audio circuits, playing part of Stairway to Heaven backwards.
You might also enjoy the book Why Flip a Coin: The Art and Science of Good Decisions .
P.S. I'm not laughing at your ignorance. I suspect you are merely frustrated and venting. Please do take about 10% of the time you spend reading slashdot, and use that time to hone your logical reasoning skills and understanding of statistics. It can be fun!
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If you look on ebay, you will see that there are a large number of iPhones listed there. If Apple runs short of the phones, just wait until these auctions fail, just like with the PS3, and there will be a lot of them returned to the stores.
Too many people believe that a device being produced in a high volume, and easily available in almost every city, will sell for twice what they paid for it on ebay.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
So when do we get to see the latest in the series of "Hi I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" television ads?
You know, the one where the Mac guy just stands there, in a catatonic state, because he hasn't been activated yet?
Personally, that little bill I get in the mail once a month is a PRETTY big dialog from the cell-phone carrier that I take very seriously.
That doesn't really involve having to have AT&T DO anything though, which is the real problem with any carrier - the point at which something has to be changed, is the point of frustration in regards to cell phones.
Bills you receive, you pay, there is not really any pain except perhaps when you need to pay your billing address - but there again, that is a change and not the normal course of operations for a bill.
This incidentally is exactly why I would never sign up for automatic bill pay, because the likleyhood of my needing to eventually change that form of payment (CC lost, dropping service) is too high and I don't trust many companies with enough details to extract money from me directly.
And again, maybe Im wrong, but last I heard these iPhone dont come with any "unlimited minutes" plans.
I also cannot talk an unlimited amount of time. But actually, you are partly wrong - the $80 and $100 plans come with unlimited nights & weekends. I personally will not need more than a few hundred minutes a month anyway, so the $60 plan was perfect.
I know plenty of people who when they hated their provider, you know what they did? They SWITCHED! And then again, and again, until they found someone they were happy with.
Yes, I switched and switched and settled - once I realized they were all the same. And now I've switched again.
And not ONCE has that final company been AT&T/Cingular.
I know people that had cingular before. Heck, this wole article is about people with cingular (AT&T) accounts having trouble migrating to the iPhone. So it would seem a number of people were already happy with AT&T to have been using them before... remember they ARE the largest cell carrier, and that means they have the largest number of customers. By your own logic that would technically make them the "best" since after rounds of switching that's where people ended up.
And the people who dont realize it just seem to either A. Have too much money B.
I don't particularly care for your financial pissing contest. I'll bet I paid less for my last phone + service than you do for yours (pay as you go, $15 every three months). $60 a month is not much compared to what a LOT of people are paying for cell service, and I get something very valuable to me in return by way of features. I don't like spending a lot of money on a cell phone or a plan but if there is real value, I am happy to do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who cares? You should know better - a new tech product is bound to have issues. It's not worth waiting in line for. Wait until it's been out a while; by then they've sorted out the glitches, maybe even upgraded the specs ever so slightly. Oh, you want to be able to wank over the fact you bought an iPhone on the day it was released for $600!? Sucker!
When I opted out of my contract, they billed me the cancellation fee - once for each phone, on each account, that turned into just under $1800 for cancelling 3 phones. In 3 months all I ever heard was "yes it looks like something is wrong, but if you'll just pay your bill we'll refund you when we figure it out."
I still get the occasional call from them & I still tell them I'll pay after they figure it out.
Fill your boots mate, although, if you can be "moved to tears" by the purchase of a trendy gadget, then you've possibly lost all sense of perspective. Usually, I usually reserve those kind of emotions for more powerful things, like a loved one recovering from cancer, or the birth of a child. Each to their own, I guess.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
That was silly.. you could've got fifty quid for it.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
It means you and the current phone companies are clueless about the meaning of "good" products and "good" services. You are welcome to remain a dumbass, while Apple does something about it.
Huh? What's with the ad hominem? And what does this have to do with a shiny object in the sky?
It may take longer than a day...
Both Apple and AT&T shares are down.
According to Bill Shope, an analyst at JP Morgan, "we believe initial demand may have been disappointing, but it's still early."
As the wise man Nelson once said: Ha ha!
I have no pity whatsoever. So your foolish ideals about the IPhone clashed with reality? Imagine that.
Now for the less smug post:
I've never had a "great" experience with any cell phone provider, and given the information I've gathered from others I have yet to know anyone that has. It's not surprising at all that the hype didn't match the reality. Quite disappointing considering what people paid for them.
There are two things that have been mentioned that I am not too surprised about:
1. The enrollment process for new iPhones was probably pretty streamlined for those that were activating new service or doing a simple transfer (new device, same contract). Looks like the trouble starts with more complex changes where people are changing service plans or changing providers at the same time.
2. The impact of this product release is impacting all the other carriers where people are changing or cancelling service, along with the expected hassle of number portability.
No big newsflash here, move along...
GSM coverage is definitely not excellent in the central U.S. plains or the Rocky Mountains. There is coverage now on interstate highways and in cities and larger towns, but smaller towns and highway routes have spotty coverage or none at all. There were a handful of small telephone companies that sprung up to fill the void in the past few years. Two of the largest such have been recently acquired.
Western Wireless was acquired by Alltel.
AT&T recently acquired Dobson Communications (which was the largest vendor licensing the Cellular One brand). I think that the "new AT&T" realizes that Verizon will kick their ass if they don't start competing on the coverage front. Nobody can touch Verizon in the U.S. for actually getting a wireless signal in more places.
The AT&T coverage map is, ahem, optimistic, regarding its coverage in the plains states. The Dobson/Cellular One acquisition helps with this, but not with the rocky mountain states.
Here is a relatively honest assessment of GSM coverage in the western US: Cellular One coverage map (includes the Dobson network and all the other mom-and-pop licensees of the Cellular One brand).
The Alltel coverage map is also a little deceptive, because it mixes their GSM network in with their other network, but they provide much better GSM coverage in the west than anybody else, thanks to their acquisition of Western Wireless. Both T-Mobile and AT&T were asleep at the wheel and either should have acquired Western Wireless. It will be more difficult for AT&T to assemble a network which can rival Alltel or Verizon in the west. Fortunately, they are able to lease time on the Alltel network for their customers, as does T-Mobil. Oddly enough, Alltel does not provide GSM service to its own customers.
It's not clear that AT&T can fix this problem via acquisitions. Alltel already bought the company that AT&T should have acquired. What's left now is a whole bunch of relatively small players. AT&T will need to go on a major buying and building spree if they are really serious about providing nationwide cellular GSM coverage. They have been cherry picking the best (highest population density) markets for years, but they'll need to get serious about providing coverage to the rest of the country if they don't want the "I can't get an iPhone because AT&T doesn't offer service in my area" blogger chorus to drown out their efforts to promote the iPhone beyond the initial product launch. The stock valuations of AT&T and Alltel are interesting, too. AT&T has brand recognition, but they are themselves possibly an acquisition candidate.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
It is too bad all these people waited around so long for such an expensive item. After all the hype, fooling around with, Cisco over trademarks, diving head-first into unfamiliar markets. . . you would hope this stuff would at least work 95% of the time. But it seems like they are more into the 85% to 70% success range which is really bad for such a major launch. This is just horrible. People are shelling out $500 and $600 for crap. What the fact that there were too many early adopters trying to hit the activation systems at once or does the product just suck? We'll see.
AT&T and Apple both knew that the iPhone would be immensely popular, but neither company apparently realized how big initial demand would be. The Chicago Tribune reports today that "before the phone's debut analysts expected Apple to sell 50,000 to 200,000 units" during the rollout, but initial reports are that 500,000 units were in customer hands within the first few hours. (see http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-070702i phone,0,1339325.story?coll=chi-business-hed)
One problem was that both companies were not only introducing a new product, but a new activation method -- take it home and activate it yourself using iTunes. Store employees were not allowed to open the box or even break the shrink-wrap; it was all up to customers -- all of whom were obviously untrained in the process, and some of whom were probably less technically qualified than others.
To make matters even more complicated, at least half of the iPhone first-day buyers were coming from other cell phone providers (see http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/02/500-000-iphones -sold-so-far-but-can-apple-keep-up/), the AT&T activation server was swamped. According to a friend who works for the company, all half-a-million buyers wanted to activate at the same time.
Under those circumstances, what could anyone expect but difficulty?
One reason I'm waiting until Christmas to get mine ...
Hey I'm curious... you say you cannot use anything on the unit, not even the MP3 player unless you activate it?
What about if you end your subscription service? Say you run out of cash for the overpriced service plan or you wait out your 2 year contract.... does the phone stop working even as an MP3 player?
If so, that's pretty much genius on Apple's part, right? I mean, if iPods are popular, imagine iPhones that you have to keep subscribing to in order to even listen to the music you stored on it.
Reuters, digg and engadget are all claiming 500,000 units sold in the first 3 days. Probably not the most successful rollout but a pretty respectable showing.
I dont have time to link to all of the articles.
"The Apple loonies"
Indeed!
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I have an LG fusic with sprint service. It has a micro sd slot, which currently houses a 2gb card. It also has a built in radio transmitter, to wirelessly beam my mp3's onto any car stereo tuned to the right frequency.
I have never had the desire to watch full length movies on my phone, and the "limited" mobile web features are about all I'd ever think to use it for- I've looked up addresses and phone numbers, got directions, checked movie times and sports scores, and checked my gmail.
The iphone looks like a cool toy, I just don't need the extra features, or have the desire to spend extra money to switch providers and everything else. P.S.- 90%+ of the "media" phones out there have the same micro (or mini) sd slot mine does, thus making the amount of memory a moot point. I could put a movie on my 2gb card, I've just never seen a reason to.
Actually, AT&T's GSM service uses two in-house systems called Telegence and CARE for account management and billing, depending on the part of the country you're in. CARE is the old Bellsouth wireless billing system, and Telegence is the old SBC wireless billing system.
The old AT&T Wireless TDMA service may have been run on Amdocs, but I can't remember. I do remember that there was an effort to transition away from the old AT&T Wireless's billing system in all CARE & Telegence markets, and I know for a fact that they wouldn't be using it for any new service.
(Disclosure: I used to work in support for part of CARE. Incidentally, they do use a product called Clarify for managing trouble-tickets originated by customers, but I'm pretty sure it's by Clarify, Inc. and not by Amdocs. Could be wrong; since I no longer work there, I can't verify.)
iPwned.
I'm gay and I hate the iPhone.
and the following day, Apple jumped nearly six dollars.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Oh, look, it seems they "only" managed to sell 700,000 opening weekend.
I'm not an iPhone hater, but you do your cause no service by quoting inaccurate statistics.