AT&T suspends iPhone 4 preorders as security breach reports grow - Page 2

Just imagine how Verizon's servers will overload when Apple finally wises up. I can't understand how Steve Jobs can let all those customers slip through his hands. I can only assume he doesn't need the business. But I guess there are a lot of Verizon faithful like me who would rather wait for an iPhone than jump to an Android.

This kinda calls into question the "Android has totally defeated the iPhone" crowd's talking points doesn't it.

Most definitely. I was just pointing out that some of the worst case reports were probably in areas without 4G coverage.

I don't think an EVO's battery life would be enough for me. Even the "good" reports suggest that it only lasts a day. I don't want to be tethered to a charger like that.

Why is the title of the article trying to imply that they suspended ordering because of the potential security breach?

If any other company sold out of their supply they would suspend pre-ordering.
Why does that normal action mean anything other than ATT sold out their supply?

And if this was such a problem why were ATT and Apple able to sell out all of their initial supply amounts?

Apple & ATT had so much demand that initial inventory has been consumed (which was more units than any previous release to date) and they managed to handle the volume even despite the apparent nightmare security issues.

Most business would be applauded for that.

Come on folks, focus on the race. If you look at the wall during the spin, you brain will be crushed by the wall.

The demand for the iPhone should have come as no surprise to anyone. Emphasis on should.

It makes you wonder if last quarter results for android sales percentage was a result of the massive amount of people waiting till this quarter to by new iphones. It will be interesting to see how the percentages of iphones and android phones sold will compare this quarter.

He also forgot to mention he uses a task killer every 10 minutes.

enjoy your EVO. i honestly mean that. but if you're stupid enough to have bought a 3GS in Chicago less than a year ago [during AT&T's highest overload period] thinking your calls wouldn't be dropped, don't act so smug here.

i also just realized the "demand 10 times greater than 3GS" above.

the 3GS sold 1 million units in it's first weekend...
are we expected to believe that there were 10 million pre-orders placed for iPhone4?

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...per_month.html

producing 3 million per month, simple math says that with a 3-million unit stockpile at launch, some people won't get the phone they pre-ordered yesterday until the beginning of September.

Hopefully it all dies down by October when my contract is up.

Well, you could examine his 23 posts since registering and get a pretty good idea of why he's a member of this forum.

Excellent point. I never cease to be amazed at all these anonymous people who know more about running Apple than Jobs.

Just think what the share price would have been if iGenius or Groovetube or any of the others were in charge!!!


Not to mention the good old fragmentation problem.

Oh, I know, the Apple haters will say that fragmentation isn't an issue for Android. But my daughter just got a new Motorola Backflip phone. While Android 2.2 has been released and 2.1 has been out for quite a while (and a number of other versions before that), her phone comes with Android 1.5!! They state that it will eventually be possible to upgrade to 2.1 (no 2.2!), but no timeline. A large number of the apps she wants to install require 2.1 or later, so there are a lot of the '18,000" apps that won't work, either.

Why anyone would want to mess with that kind of nonsense is beyond me-especially since Android is such a lousy OS to begin with.

It's worth mentioning that the plastic on the iPhone 3Gs is very strong and that you simply *can't* crack the corners in that way without some serious (throwing against a wall, running over with your car), kind of abuse.

*Some* of the white iPhone 3G's had a cracked plastic issue, that was fixed, and if you had an iPhone with that particular issue, it would have been replaced by Apple for free (mine was). AFAIK, the issue didn't occur with the 3Gs, but if it did, the phone would be similarly replaced, for free.

So your story makes no sense. Either you seriously abused your phone, or you mixed up a story about your 3G with your 3Gs, you were unaware somehow that this was an issue that Apple had already identified, or you are just flat out lying.

pick one.

Wow. This can't be good. AT&T is purported to already have a crappy network --- 600k new users is going to be challenging. Maybe most of those are existing customers...

I'm planning on finally switching from Verizon some time this year... glad I decided to wait and let things settle down before making the move.

It is not rumor mongling. I don't read Engadget. Why don't you read this article, and there are plenty others just like it. So you do a little here and a little there, and your battery is already half dead? And you think that is fine? Good luck to you.

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/05/...sprint-review/

Directly from the linked article:
"Simply put, the battery sucks. Its a deal breaker. Im really sorry to say that, too. In fact it hurts me because I wanted this phone so bad, but the battery life is horrible. The phone will lose a third of its battery sitting overnight with the GPS, WiFi, and 4G turned off. Even with Advanced Task Killer set to aggressive and auto killing apps every hour, the most I can get out of the phone is about ten hours.

Take yesterday: I pulled it off the charger at 9 am, checked my mail and ESPN a couple of times during church, used the GPS navigation for 13 miles, and then checked my mail a few times throughout the afternoon while I was at a family event. The phone died promptly at 6 pm. Its that bad.

Ive tried a few different things like using a static background rather than a live background, turning off widget animation, disabling WiFi/4G/GPS, and setting Advanced Task Killer to aggressive. Nothing makes a significant difference. The phone just sucks the battery dry.

So heres the problem. Power users are the ones that can fully take advantage of the large screen, but the more they use their phone, the faster it dies. The only way I can see to counter this is to plug in the phone whenever possible. When you sit down at your desk, plug it in. Drive to the store, plug it in. Go to bed, plug it in. You might want to invest in one of those instant charge battery packs, too."

I can understand AT&T not accepting any more pre-orders. OK, they sold out of their supply. But what about Apple. Why did Apple suspend pre-orders? Did they run out of supply? How about taking orders for a later delivery? As of this date (the day after), they are not accepting pre-orders despite the fact that the link remains on the store web site. I get a message that says "unable to complete set up online".... visit a store on the 24th to pick up a first come, first served phone.

"Apple Retail Store

Currently, there are no reservations available. But you can still pick up an iPhone on a first-come, first-served basis at your favorite Apple Retail Store starting at 7 a.m. on June 24. And since youve already set up your account online, youll save time when you stop by the store."

WTF!

Very disappointed! Maybe I don't want an iphone after all.

why are you here?

It appears they did run out of supply otherwise they would have kept accepting pre-orders, been able to promise more supply to their retailers, and they wouldn't have to keep moving the new order ship by date back. I don't know how else to take it.

As for Apple not accepting pre-orders, the site seems to go through to the AT&T authentication page here in the US. If they having customers go through all that just to say that they can't pre-order then I agree that is wrong, but I can't imagine that is the case since do list a ship-by date of July 14th right now.

I would be happy if Apple just took my order for a July 14 delivery. As of right now, I can't order one for any delivery date.

This is one more reason to offer the iPhone on multiple carriers. The ordering process might not have melted down yesterday if the processing could have been distributed across a few different systems.

After many timeouts and error messages, I upgraded my wife's iPhone and ordered a new one for myself. But I didn't receive email receipts for either, and I can't look up the order status for the new order. I tried to call AT&T website support and couldn't get a call through. So I don't even know if I actually have an order in or not.

You're correct that the demand would have been spread over more mobile network operator transaction servers, thus easing the demands on AT&T.

However, that is irrelevant to the situation at hand. AT&T suspended pre-orders and Apple keeping pushing the new pre-order date back because they have sold out. If there were more US carriers or if AT&T simply could meet the demands on its server the best result would have been those 600k units (minus the units allotted for the other 4 countries) would have sold out even faster.

Perhaps ironically, I figure most of the people who are upset about the time it took it get an order through may not have had an opportunity at all if the orders started at 4am Eastern Time. They might have been through the 300k(?) before sun up. Personally, I'd be more pissed to wake yesterday morning to find that they were already sold out.

Shades of MaBell

Wake up ATT. You do not suspend pre-orders. You continue to take orders and inform your customers that demand exceeds supply. You also tell them that as inventories replenish their orders will be filled and they will be notified of a delivery date.

You never turn away a customer

Actually, the situation at hand is that I wasted a couple hours yesterday getting halfway into an order and then erroring out. I'd much rather be told the product is unavailable and given a date when I can order it, than waste my time in a futile effort.

I'm currently on hold with AT&T trying to figure out whether I even have an order in or not. I've been through the phone tree several times and just got transferred from a guy who was simply not able to wrap his head around the difference between an upgrade order and a new line order. Every time I have a problem to resolve with AT&T I end up wanting to kill myself. Maybe I don't want this phone after all!

I see your point there. I'm glad I got an order at all over having to wait a week or four. It did take several hours and i finally did it via AT&T's site. It was nerve racking since I started 3 minutes after it went live.

It took about 20 hours for my order to show up. If you got a confirmation page from the website and the moneys were deducted from your account then you should be okay. I can put in my order number into their site and I pops up with my order in progress. Calling AT&T probably won't help because I don't think the CSRs have any better access than we do from their site.

Agreed. In order of preference:

1) Take my order now, even if the ship date is delayed.
2) Don't take my order now, but tell me how and when I can place it in the future.
3) Waste my time with a lot of website problems, then make it impossible to confirm whether or not my order was received (my current situation).

I don't think money will be deducted until the order ships (at least not with a credit card, debit cards might be different). Unfortunately I didn't think to write down my confirmation number. Argh...

Well, I finally got a helpful agent who was able to confirm that my order did -not- go through. She also explained that pre-orders were suspended because AT&T reached the point where they couldn't honor the promised ship date for all the orders. She didn't know when I'd be able to place my order again. I hope they re-open pre-orders with a later ship date just so I can get this done and cross it off my to do list.

Apart from my own personal frustrations with the pre-order process, the security breeches are a serious issue and show a certain unacceptable unpreparedness on AT&T's part.

As for me, here's how ridiculous my pre-order situation was:
I'm in Alaska so I tried ordering at 4:00am EST, 12:00am AKDT. Couldn't get anywhere on either Apple's site or AT&Ts site. I tried for the next hour and a half with no luck, and decided to go to bed. I woke up the next day and got even less far than I had before. I ended up calling AT&T, to find that their system was down and they couldn't help me. At any rate, my AT&T billing address is a P.O. Box which they say they can't ship to (and they don't allow you to ship to anywhere except your billing address). Later on I was able to view my eligibility through Apple's website but got kicked out at the next step. After finally getting through to Apple support, they told me I couldn't pre-order the iPhone through them because I'm on a family plan- even though I'm just replacing my current iPhone 3G and need to make NO changes to my wireless plan. They recommended I go to an AT&T store. I go to my local AT&T store and they are still taking pre-orders. But they will not accept my debit card (even processed as a credit transaction)! They say they are requiring credit cards and won't accept any debit cards for pre-orders. By this time I'm livid. I call AT&T again and they recommend I try to get it through Best Buy. Halfway through the pre-order process, they tell me they won't be receiving pre-orders on launch day- they will call me to arrange an appointment when they come in, and they don't know when that will even be. At this point I just gave up.

in order to reserve the latest in handheld technology:
ask sales associate to rub the side of a pen over your credit card with a sheet of carbon paper between the two.
this changes everything. again.

Interesting article. Guess that guy's results are different mine and the other hundreds of "reports" and message board threads of people who get "expected" battery life.

Interesting he points out the navigation, what are the free alternatives on the iPhone for that? What's battery life like on the iPhone when running the free navigation? I digress.

The battery life argument is so ridiculous. I love when people start complaining about battery life as soon as they get the device (and don't realize how much more they are actually using the device). Look at all the iPhones that have come out and when they first come out. You could go and find "reports" and threads on support.apple.com of people complaining about battery life.

I know personally I had to follow the APPLE PROVIDED battery guidance to turn off wi-fi, bluetooth, not check e-mail as frequently, turn off my 3G when unnecessary....

Can't wait for the battery life reports to come out when everyone activates June 24 and is searching for 3G signal.... It's truly ashame how much time people have put into trying to acquire this device in the last 48 hours. The frustration, anger, and unhappiness...only to feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled when Apple releases a 4G version next year.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

What he said...
If everyone on here can run Apple & AT&T better get to it or STFU.
But... we know that will not happen since the enjoyment of valueless whining is too great.

...I'm just curious, why even BOTHER to contribute here in the case where you are so disillusioned with your (former) iPhone experience. Do you expect to receive validation for your opinion/experience here (highly unlikely), are you proselytizing potential switchers here (also highly unlikely), do you have a slight masochistic streak or enjoy pissing in the AI wheaties (much more likely), or ?.

I mean, there's no rule that sez you have to drink the koolaid, fall in line with whatever coolness is currently being released - but your posts and the responses speak of a colossal waste of time and effort in an entirely unappreciative audience. Moreover, while discuss of alternative platforms is generally welcome, the constant use of personal experience doesn't validate the platform you are championing. For example, what is the current customer satisfaction rating on your new phone (and since its a newer device, even allowing for new-user blind love)?

You have to compare it to an Apple iPhone year over year continuing customer satifaction rating of over 90%. In a user population of around 50 million or better, that speaks volumes against your particular experience. And please don't sully your commentary with nonsensical statements like "Apple iPhone user are a bunch of mindless lemmings/tools" and such like.

Just sayin'

As for your first question, it's really just having fun with folks in here and ruffling the feathers. It's good to think outside the box.

When did I say "Apple iPhone users are a bunch of mindless lemmings/tools"? Just curious, I don't remember typing that even though you're quoting me as saying that.

And, if you did some research (not sure where you pulled 90% from), Apple iPhone from Dec 2010-May 2010 has a customer satisfaction rating of 77%. Not saying that's bad, still very good, but quote some real numbers.

http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/...ngs-apps-no-1/

The best line of that is the reason for Motorola's surge "Due to Android."

That is not a hard projection, based on how I have been treated by them over the last 2 days. And, I work for a company with many thousands of employees. Very stupid on the part of AT&T but none of us should be surprised.

This has been my experience with pre-ordering an iPhone4:

1. I tried on 6/14/2010 to pre-order my iPhone4 through my AT&T wireless internet account. Their website was down.
2. I logged in later but was told my password was incorrect. This is a typical ploy used by AT&T when their web servers are screwed up. Instead of being honest and asking you to sign in later, they make it seem like it is your fault. They then lock you out after 3 failed login attempts so you are forced to call them on the phone. This has happened to me before and I stopped after the second attempt.
3. I tried to log in again on the internet but when I clicked on the upgrade page, my browser went into think mode for 5 minutes. I finally closed down the browser.
4. At 1 am, I logged in again to the website and go a message that my account is no longer accessable from the internet and I have to call an 800 number with a special code.
5. I called 611 this morning and got a support person who, after I had already verified my name and ss # once, refused to give me any info until I verified the same info. Finally, he told me that pre-ordering was once again available and he connected me to the 'right' department. Turns out I got a recording that all iPhone pre-orders are still suspended. Thank you Michael Duncan for lying to me.
6. Tried to get an operator this afternoon on the AT&T chat line. Identified myself but Bonnie Lewis refused to give me any kind of ID number. Did you know that there are over 4,750,000 hits for Bonnie Lewis on google? After she refused to give me her ID or any other info like her department supervisor's name, she disconnected me.

Say what you want, but this is the exact type of attitude that will put AT&T out of business. You don't think so? Heard of Wang, Ashton Tate, Lotus 123, Borland, Commodore (how I loved that Amiga) the list goes on and on of companies that don't care about customers. They might survive for a while but not forever

I am a big fan of Mr. Jobs. I don't understand how he is putting up with this. Of course, it could be that Verizon and Sprint are even worse and he knows that he is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Unfortunately, we who pay our hard-earned money to these companies that care little about us, are the ones who end up with the shaft you-know-where.

Flame out...

Ned

I'm sure they'll last more than a few more days. After all, thanks to iPhone, AT&T remains one of the few companies still growing (slowly) and making money.

Yet, the iPhone is still given a 77% positive rating vs 64% for Motorola - that's a HUGE difference.