iPhone 6 Sales Crush Means Late-Night Waits For Some Early Adopters

Even after the months of hype and speculation, the behind-the-scenes development and manufacture, and then the announcement Tuesday, it seems Apple's servers weren't quite ready for the workout they got from would-be early adopters of its newest iPhone. Preorders through Verizon Wireless and AT&T largely started without a hitch at midnight, though some customers on Twitter have since complained about issues. Those problems were nothing compared to the issues experienced by Sprint and T-Mobile customers. The Sprint and T-Mobile sites were still down for many users nearly two hours after presales were slated to start. Access to Sprint's site faded in and out, while the T-Mobile site continued to display a form to register for a reminder for when the preorders began. Some people joked on Twitter that they "might as well wait for the iPhone 6S now." Apple's store itself was down for a few hours, too.

Comments

I just want the new Nexus.

[LWATCDR]

So when is the new Nexus coming out?

Over all I found the 6 to be a lack luster announcement. Nothing really new was announced.

Re:I just want the new Nexus.

[nblender]

I've got a Nexus-5 so I'm going to skip the Nexus-6... I'm holding out for the Nexus-7!

Re:I just want the new Nexus.

[schlachter]

I've met many 40's and up Android users who say they wanted an iPhone but bought an Android because they couldn't read on the iPhone screen because it was too small. So the larger screen size is a feature that many people will cite when the buy the iPhone 6.

It's also got between 10% and 100%+ battery life improvement. They didn't focus on that but it's pretty important to many.

Re:I just want the new Nexus.

[Anonymous Coward]

The ironic thing is that NFC isn't anything new. All my recent Android phones have had the ability to use NFC, and my HTC One M8 can use an app that sits on the SIM card, called ISIS (poor name, ironically) that can handle payments in a secure manner (the SIM card does all the processing, so even if the phone is compromised, the PIN used is not stored/used on the phone. Of course, I'm sure malware can log the PIN, but it is as secure as any other wallet mechanism.) My biggest beef about it is that you can only use it with Amex or a Wells Fargo credit card.

The reason why NFC payments have not taken off in the US is because there are many standards. PayPal has one. Google Wallet has one. The ideal would be to have a standard on one or two that all merchants can easily take. If the merchant has to buy new expensive equipment to handle it, they won't. Since Chip and PIN is coming in 2015, it would be nice to see at least 1-2 standard NFC payment mechanisms be commonplace as most card swipe machines will have to be replaced anyway.

To me, I don't see anything interesting about the 6 and 6+ that would make it worth jumping from an iPhone 5S or even an iPhone 5. The camera's update is a good one, but the new CPU doesn't mean much, and the growing form factor [1] isn't that attractive unless cargo pants became the rage.

[1]: Realistically, the growing form factor isn't due to consumer demand. It is due to needing more room for a bigger battery and surface area to disperse heat with the faster CPUs.

Re:I just want the new Nexus.

[American AC in Paris]

The only real feature of note was Apple Pay, which might finally make NFC payments take off in the US. It's been a technology that should have hit it big a couple of years ago, but has never seen much consumer buy-in for some reason.

It's pretty straightforward, to my mind. With the exception of all but the most staggering technological advancements, widespread adoption of new technology typically requires:

1. a sound implementation,
2. a robust support infrastructure, and
3. an effective marketing campaign.

Geeks, for a variety of reasons, tend to respect the first, grok the second, and abhor the third. I personally believe it's what drives our perpetual cycle of incredulity on this subject--because we so detest the last part of this equation, we refuse to see its importance in getting all those squishy, distracted, emotional bags of water to adopt cool new stuff.

NFC has never had the effective marketing campaign in the US, and only kinda had the support infrastructure. The iPhone has incredible inertia on the marketing front, and Apple have clearly done the legwork on building a good starting lineup of financial institutions and retailers for Apple Pay. It remains to be seen whether this'll be sufficient to make NFC catch on, but it's easily the closest we've come to covering all three of the bases above.

Re:I just want the new Nexus.

[nblender]

I'm one. I switched from my iphone4 to a nexus5 for two reasons:

- my eyes have aged substantially in the last 6 or 7 years, most dramatically in the last 3.
- $829 (CAD) for an iphone5 vs. $349 for a Nexus5...

Additional perks:
- wireless charging

Re:I just want the new Nexus.

[tlhIngan]

The only real feature of note was Apple Pay, which might finally make NFC payments take off in the US. It's been a technology that should have hit it big a couple of years ago, but has never seen much consumer buy-in for some reason.

Because no one unified around it. You have credit cards and phones and all that, and the phones were all fragmented into using Google Wallet or other custom thing so it was impossible to actually use.

Effectively, Google thought "If you build it, they will come" and everyone basically gave a collective "meh" and promptly did their own thing.

What Apple did was try to be a de-facto standard. Apple made deals with Visa, MasterCard and American Express (which probably covers the vast majority of credit card charges out there). Apple made deals with big retailers people used. So in the end, Apple has, upon launch, the support of the vast majority of credit card payment companies, and big companies that most people shop at.

Plus, Apple has money on their side - the people who buy Apple products tend to be ones who have money, and are the kind of people who do spend it. Android users tend to be more tight-asses (given the vast majority of them are free phones that their carrier gave away), so are in generaly seen as a "lesser valued" market.

So you have companies agreeing to Apple because they know Apple customers generally have money. As a side effect, it means the technology being promoted gets widely distributed so everyone else benefits as well.

The outage

[iMouse]

...that Samsung wishes they had.

Re:Android is Crushing Apple Phone Sales - NOT!

[i kan reed]

This post is an interesting case in wrongness density.

The iphone's latest demise.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how the ihaters around here croon the iphone's demise as each new device is launched.. And they each go on to smashing, record sales that beat the last one.

The 5s was particularly funny. People bitched and moaned about nothing innovative. (Despite being the first mobile device with a 64bit arm cpu, and stands to be still for probably another good 8 months. That's almost 2 full years of apple leading an innovation that nobody else even had plans for at that point) - Oh, and that fingerprint scanner that turned out to be everyone's favorite feature. One button press secure unlock anyone?

Yet, the 5s went to smash sales records even beyond apple's most optimistic expectations. Record breaking device sales in it's category.
The 6 launch is looking to be even better.

Do you know why I stick with the iphone line? It's easy. It's simple. It works. I don't have to fuck around with my phone. It's always there. Each time I get a new phone, all of my shit migrates over seamlessly. I still have songs, apps, notes, pictures from my original iphone.

I build my own PCs. I love linux. I stick with the iphone because it's nice having something you don't have to fuck with to get it to work properly every once in a while.

Re:The iphone's latest demise.

[CastrTroy]

I don't have an iPhone, but I kind of agree with this. A phone is a tool, it's not a toy that I want to play with and modify. I don't want to miss a call or not get an alarm because I installed some rogue firmware on my phone (I know people this has happened to because they're always installing different ROMs on their Android phone). I'm not saying that getting an iPhone is the only way to get this experience, but that I find that this is really the point of a phone. I wanted a toy to install software on and experiment with and crash and reboot all the time, there's plenty of devices out there that are cheaper and can do just that.

Re:Is this why they call them "smart" phones?

[Dixie_Flatline]

It won't, actually. Apple's prices don't drop in the middle of a cycle. It'll cost exactly the same in July of next year. In August, you may see carriers cut the prices to entice people to clear their existing stock.

I just want the new Nexus.

[slashdice]

It's worse than that. The original iphone was 320 x 480. They went retina by doubling it - 640 x 960. No problem, you provide 2x images, everything works great. Then the elongated it to 640 x 1136. still pretty straightforward, though, 2x images with a bit more height. You may need to adjust your layout a bit but no major problems. But now the iphone 6 is 750 x 1334 and 1080 x 1920.

It's like they somehow decided android's fragmentation was a competitive advantage! Oh, and now you provide 3x images and they get downsampled. It will not look as good. Full stop.

Listen Apple, you didn't build a phone that people wanted, you built a phone that the press wanted. Not because they wanted it as a phone, but because they need to write stories about something. These are the same idiots that spent 20 years calling you beleaguered and taking bets on when you would go bankrupt. A larger phone won't do shit except change the narrative from "they need to release a larger phone" to "out of ideas and copying samsung"

Of course this means

[DJCouchyCouch]

Apple is doomed.

Re:Dat Camera

[CanHasDIY]

The rear metal-rimmed camera is not flush with the case, so ironically it's not the iPhone screen getting scratched, it's every surface you lay your new iPhone down on.

So, make sure you buy a stand so you don't accidentally set it on your gold-pressed latinum desk. Problem solved.

Re:Is this why they call them "smart" phones?

[Dixie_Flatline]

Oh please. I've seen that graphic, and it's obviously misleading. Yes, there are features that the Nexus 4 had years ago.

One of them is a feature I don't even want, but I'm forced to get--a 4.7" screen. I really rather prefer a 3.5" or 4" screen.

You can't ACTUALLY make payments with Nexus 4 because the tech is there but the infrastructure isn't. Ironically, Apple doing NFC payments may make it possible for someone to use that feature.

And then (as per the article) there's Touch ID. And the 64-bit A8 (the A7 is still beating new phones on single-core benchmarks, sunspider, etc. even though it's a year old). I get a permissions system that isn't ridiculous and if I have a problem with the phone, I can take it into a store and have someone look at it. I don't have to send it back for service, or talk to the carrier.

Oh, and the Nexus 4 has famously bad battery life. I borrowed one for a while from a friend to try it out, and I could lose 60% of the battery in two hours while it was sitting in a locker while I was swimming. My venerable iPhone 4 would lose 0-2% in the same time frame.

These graphics are just elaborate trolling--you and I both know that the Nexus 4 wasn't actually any more usable than the iPhone 5 at the time, and it's obviously not even on the same page right now. The devices are getting closer and closer to parity, but that's not actually surprising to anyone except the most bitter partisans.

I doubt your doubt

[SuperKendall]

Only an idiot holds back physical inventory when they can sell it easily.

Apple doesn't need more press or hype; it already has those. They simply sell as many units as they can make.

If your "theory" is correct, then why do shipping times gradually get longer as more orders are made? If your "theory" is correct, why would the 6Plus ship a week after the 6 even for the earliest adopters?

Whatever happened to the belief that the simplest answer is usually true...

Re:Is this why they call them "smart" phones?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

As a bitter partisan, I'd hate to say that the things that Apple is playing "catchup" on are things that by getting right now, they don't have to worry about everything going to hell later.

For instance, how iOS implements third party keyboards is that the keyboard itself is sandboxed away from the rest of the running process. In comparison, on Android, keyboards are basically key loggers running onto of the current running process.

Intents vs Plugins? Similar.

see: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

There were reports that Swiftkey was going to be announced for iOS 7, funny enough, as a third party keyboard. However, it seems like all of the XPC stuff Apple has been doing, Google has a LOT to catch up on. Apple now just has the low hanging fruit.