Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family, iPhone, MobileMe
Apple had a bad day
Last year, I took my toddlers -- at the time 4-years-old and 2-years-old -- to see a play. We intended to meet up with a friend of mine and her 4-year-old.Hours before, the whole thing fell apart. My friend offered to sit with the older of the two while the 2-year-old and I went off on our own. I agreed, and 90 minutes later the kids and I were sweating in the worst traffic jam I had ever seen.
We arrived 20 minutes late and had to park at the far end of the lot. Stressed, I sprinted to the box office with a toddler under each arm, praying it was open. Panting and drenched, I put them down and handed my debit card to the woman behind the glass.
"Cash only" she said.
That was a bad day. But it's nothing when compared to the trouble Apple and AT&T have experienced over the past 36 hours.
MobileMe was initially scheduled to go live between 6 p.m. and 12 a.m. PT on July 9th. At 9:30PM Eastern, Apple stated that the transition would take place between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. PT. As of this writing MobileMe is live, but not all of the push services are working.
As for the 3G iPhone, there are plenty in stores. The problem is that customers can't get them working. Reports are coming in of people waiting for hours in Apple Stores while employees attempt activation. Some are being told to go home and activate on their own, only to find that activation servers are down. Not the PR either company wanted today.
Additionally, the 2.0 iPhone software became available yesterday, a day earlier than Apple intended. Today, it's out for real, but the same servers hindering 3G iPhone activation are preventing 1st generation iPhones from re-activating after receiving the update.
Finally, the iPod touch update was available briefly before disappearing again (as of this writing). Just like the iPhone users, iPod touch users are a bit cranky.
Everyone has a bad day, but unfortunately this affects a lot of people. The best we can say is buck up, little Apple soldiers. This will soon be over.
At least you're not standing with two cranky toddlers in the hot sun.
Image used with permission from Sean O'Steen.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
hines said 5:05PM on 7-11-2008
Clearly Apple has a lot to learn about IT.
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Chad said 3:42PM on 7-12-2008
i find it odd that engadget is throughly pissed with apple but tuaw is just saying 'buck up it will be over soon.' that is pathetic. if vista had a launch where people went home and it crashed when an update came then everybody would have laughed. although i am a macbookpro user most apple users have no appreciation for what microsoft did. yes i do not like vista although i think that xp is very good...nothing compared to leopard but at least i recognize the real microsoft and apple. lets be honest apple pulls much more shit than microsoft did with the whole browser / OS integration that got them screwed on nov 2, 2001 (just days after the release of the ipod)...
Chad said 4:36AM on 7-12-2008
i find it odd that engadget is throughly pissed with apple but tuaw is just saying 'buck up it will be over soon.' that is pathetic. if vista had a launch where people went home and it crashed when an update came then everybody would have laughed. although i am a macbookpro user most apple users have no appreciation for what microsoft did. yes i do not like vista although i think that xp is very good...nothing compared to leopard but at least i recognize the real microsoft and apple. lets be honest apple pulls much more shit than microsoft did with the whole browser / OS integration that got them screwed on nov 2, 2001 (just days after the release of the ipod)...
Mark said 5:08PM on 7-11-2008
MobileMe is (yet) like a rumbling ride on rocky road.. It's very slow in Firefox 3 - timeouts happen all the time. It doesn't work at all in Apple's own Safari 4 Developer Preview. We'll have to see if Apple "finally got it right [this time]".
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Stef_ said 5:09PM on 7-11-2008
The big fruit had a rotten day... =(
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Doug said 3:29AM on 7-12-2008
I don't know. Sounds like they sold a shtt load of phones. That was their goal. They released a new version of the software that makes me feel like I got a new phone after a year. I never felt that way about any cell phone before.
Did they have hiccups? I am sure they did. I would have thought they would have learned some lessons about activation. I laughed when I heard they were going to be able to sign up people and activate them in 15 minutes. Have you ever been to a genius bar? I knew that was a joke.
The bigger joke is the people that stood in line waiting for these things all night and then whining because they had to wait some more. Last year, I walked in a store an hour after they went on sale and walked out in 5 minutes. When the dust cleared though today, everyone had either a great new phone or new software update that gave their old phone new life like never before.
Yes, you would have thought that they would have gotten MobileMe right out of the gate, but all in all, the days from here on out should look quite bright for the iphone.
There were bigger failures today, like a major bank failing and being seized and many, many people will lose their jobs from that event. So in the big scheme of things, Apple did not have such a bad day as a business, and the people that had to wait a little bit for their precious phone, I think they will survive the horror of today.
RobCon said 5:10PM on 7-11-2008
OK, now I'm confused. Are the MobileMe apps actually working because when the page loads for me it goes to the idisk tab and nothing on the page at all reacts to clicking?
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goobi said 8:15PM on 7-11-2008
If you are using Safari 4 Developer Preview, then no, it will not respond. Otherwise MobileMe is working just fine. Try it on Firefox.
robotoplague said 5:12PM on 7-11-2008
I started waiting at 6am after some trouble getting my existing number to port over (and down servers) I finally left with my new phone at 1pm. 7 hours!
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christapher said 10:06PM on 7-11-2008
I started waiting at midnight, was 30th in line, got in, got thru another line, got the phone in my hand, gave them my account number, got it taken back out of my hand, and left the store empty handed at 9 am.
I failed to read that ATT Small Business users MUST go to an ATT store. Damn. I'll be a proud owner of an iPhone in 5-7 business days.
Marty Dodge said 5:14PM on 7-11-2008
It was going to be a clusterfuck...only being able to activate at an AT&T store was a bad idea. They are pretty incompetent at the best of times.
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Big John said 5:42PM on 7-11-2008
Read around. I, along with scores of others, had no issue activating at home. These things were not bricked on delivery.
DJH said 5:22PM on 7-11-2008
No go for me for two days now maybe its a UK thing but no mobileme. Not getting maintenance page now, getting a 'MobileMe web applications not yet available'. So lost my gen 1 last week, spare US unit doesn't work with O2 Sim, no 3g phone upgrade today (sold out) and no MoMe. Bad Apple! Bad Apple!
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Eideard said 5:24PM on 7-11-2008
Phil Gramm must get the comments RSS feed from TUAW. :)
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geochick said 5:24PM on 7-11-2008
I got my iPhone 2 software update just fine. It took a little while though.
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Vince said 5:24PM on 7-11-2008
I got mine working fine in 10-15 minutes. I'd say AT&T had their shit together a lot more than Apple, which surprised me.
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Virtuous said 5:29PM on 7-11-2008
Apple ought to compensate their customers for this debacle.
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Cosjr said 5:29PM on 7-11-2008
A Bad Day.
My wife and I arrived at the ATT store at 7:30 am. About #60 in line. Got to the door 3 hours later. Once in the door was told the person before me got the last iphone and we would have ours on backorder. We finally got to the counter and they can't find my sign up info which I filled out 2 days earlier. It took another hour to get out of the store. I did not have my two iphones when I left. The joy is gone. This was stupid!
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Pete said 5:30PM on 7-11-2008
I learned last time to never go to an AT&T store...even if the lines are longer at Apple.
As for Mobileme, it's working fine for me. Everything loads and is fast.
But yet, a bad day overall
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Jon Crawford said 5:32PM on 7-11-2008
I had a real crapper of a day doing this iPhone 3G thing. I was in line at 6:30am. Waited until about 10am to get inside and was then greeted with yet another wait as servers were up and down, up and down.
Then once I finally got to check out, things seemed to be going smoothly until the guy says "Ok, after that gift card, the remaining balance is $164.05. I was buying a 16GB so I knew that couldn't be right. It was a $65 gift card. Shouldn't it be over $200?
"Woops," he says. "I grabbed an 8GB model." We undo and cancel everything. (Apple-Z!) And we attempted the transaction again, this time with the 16GB model. Doh! AT&T's message: "This user is not eligible for upgrade pricing." Oh no. AT&T thinks I've already used my 1 upgrade so I'd be stuck paying the unsubsidized price!
"Wait here." I stand and wait in the Apple store until about noon at which time it seems like things are going nowhere fast, so I ask if I can come back. "Yeah, good idea." Maybe not, as it would turn out. My current iPhone is now disabled because AT&T thinks I've registered a new 3G iPhone disabling my current. I haven't.
I leave the store without knowing this and being promised that things will be fine if I come back in an hour. Well, I call AT&T before returning just to check if things have been cleared up. They're worse. They think I left the store w/ a phone and I have no proof that I didn't.
Ugh! So I trek back up to Apple and wait for about an hour while they try to correct the problem. I'm told that it can't be reversed for 72 hours and I'll just have to come back and upgrade then. Sheesh!! I was in like at 6:30 for like 5 1/2 hours and then I'm told I have to come back in 3 days?!
Fail!
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