Apple iPhone 3G Launch Marred by Activation Problems

The lines weren't quite as long as during last year's mass hysteria surrounding the initial launch of Apple's iPhone, but the handset that billed itself as the third computing platform might just be living up to its name.

Checks with various East Coast locations reveal a number of long lines, 包括约翰逊市这样的小城市, TN, 在哪里的 流媒体 magazine columnist Jose Castillo arrived at 6 a.m. 发现自己排在20个人的队伍里. 一个在&T store in Madison, WI, reported 60 people in line at 8:30 a.m.

“你现在在用新手机跟我说话,卡斯蒂略说 when I phoned him from New York this morning around 9 a.m. "The quality of the sound is much better on my end." Castillo put additional positive light on the new phone, 虽然, that provides some perspective on the benefits awaiting those who visit App Store, Apple's repository of third-party applications designed to extend the iPhone's lead in productivity and media tools.

“白色是新的黑色,卡斯蒂略说, referring to the fact that Apple often puts out devices in a particular color that require a higher price point, 包括16gb的白色iPhone, "but the biggest benefit I've seen is App Store. I have already downloaded several applications including fun ones like the PhoneSaber and also business applications. 媒体工具包括VoIP和流媒体, really look like they've pushed the iPhone in to a full-fledged computing platform."

Indeed the audio quality was much better on the receiving end of our call. 然而声音的清晰度, App Store, and indeed all other features of the second-generation iPhone were lost on many potential customers in large part due to Apple's rollout strategy, which required in-store activation due to the fact that AT&T is subsidizing these phones and Apple wanted to minimize the opportunity for buyers to "jailbreak" or hack iPhones so they could be used with other carriers.

"We arrived at our local Apple retail store a little after 6:00 a.m.," said one blog post this morning, "and we surprised to find only about 50 customers ahead of us. 但商店早上8点开门的时候.m.到那时，队伍已经膨胀到几百人."

Checks of the Apple 5th Avenue flagship store, as well as the AT&T store on Broadway in Times Square, revealed long lines of waiting customers well after 10 a.m., in sharp contrast to the first launch where Apple allowed customers to pick up the product and then go home and activate it.

AT&上次发射时也有类似的问题, with horror stories of hour-long waits to activate in store. 苹果显然认为自己可以解决AT问题&T's previous problems but ended up succumbing to the same issues, iTunes服务器, 激活所需, 今天下午完全离线了.

罗恩·约翰逊, 苹果零售主管, said in a television interview on Wednesday that he expected activation to only take 15 to 30 minutes, adding that the store would spend whatever time it took to make sure customers were activated and satisfied.

There were reports that some customers were sent home, 虽然, 尝试通过iTunes激活, which also didn't work due to the overload of launching the phone across more than 20 countries in a rolling 24-hour period.

While this outage or delay might be acceptable for those buying a new phone, the fact that Apple also rolled out updates for the first-generation iPhone today—which completely wipe these phones in order to perform the iPhone 2.0更新—means that millions of old phones were trying to access the same activation servers that the new hundreds of thousands of phones were also trying to access at the same time. Many customers were left without a working phone for several hours, and warnings began popping up all over tech news and blog sites warning potential upgraders to wait before attempting the 2.0更新.

All of this may explain why Apple's stock dipped to $171.在一天中的某一时刻每股00美元, but for those who waited in line and didn't get a phone due to stock shortages, the company stock price was less of a concern than the company's inventory control.

而苹果和AT&T will undoubtedly gain several opening-day lessons, and eventually get the bugs worked out of the in-store activation system, 更重要的是平台.

和它固有的H.264 video, AAC音频, and extensibility of the platform for third-party developers including Adobe—reportedly hard at work at putting Flash Lite on the iPhone—the new device may provide an interesting business case for the use of Flash and H.264在企业, one of Apple's key target markets for the iPhone 3G, begging the question about Microsoft's VC-1 and Windows Media streaming on this new device. A spirited discussion on this topic can be found in today's 流媒体播客.