Wow, all that because you couldn't pre-order...A device that won't be out til next week...A device that will be available until the next device replaces it next year...I can understand the enthusiasm but damn...
People are acting like Apple's going run out of iPhones today and the world will end on June 25.
Oh, I'm getting the iPhone 4. Whether I'll get it on the 24th or after that, we'll see.
I've been waiting for it for more than a year.
But that's not the problem. The problem is that this is a Microsoftian fuck-up. This does not bode well for Apple's continued service to its customer base.
So it may be time to jump ship and find a company that's still got its head together in the Tech biz...if one even exists.
i really wanted to buy it through apple b ut could not contact anyone when the system was crashing so i went to att website and got the live chat rep while my order was being placed. She stated that there was a problem when reaching number transfer eligibility page. She said that if i do it with a new number it was going to work and then i could call and get my number ported. I did and it worked
Can anyone tell me the difference between buying it from apple and buying it from att? i always buy from apple and wanted to know any differences when dealing with tech support
Doesn't matter. The HTC Aria launch is going to dwarf the iPhone 4.
In what respect, the clusterf*** with the online processing? Wishful thinking aside, there is no way it can dwarf the iP4 launch, as the Aria is not launching in four countries on its first day, or 18 countries within a month.
I just received an email from ATT about my iPhone 4 order saying that the system could not verify some information and my order was cancelled. I entered everything correctly and even had a receipt with the confirmation.
Excellent, thanks. As a lawyer, I appreciate cautious language like that (even though it is misleading). As a consumer, I think it sucks.
Why be surprised? Apple has no control over FedEx. FedEx does quite well with these Apple releases, but I think anybody who has followed Apple knows quite well how quick people are to sue them for any reason they can possibly dream up. Why not a late iPhone?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AIaddict
That was not the experience this morning. I kept hanging before it asked for my AT&T number, or the "we'll be back" message kept coming up. Once Apple took my AT&T number, it quickly verified my status. What is also interesting is I heard a number of accounts of people who chose pickup getting through and people who chose delivery having it crap out. It seems to me both companies got caught with their pants down.
I've been playing with it on and off all day, and I spent quite some time in the Apple Store. Initially there was delay on the initial steps, but that cleared up. Right now it is still the AT&T verification that's messing things up. That's where every customer in the Apple Store has been held up since they opened according to the staff, the people who were still waiting, and, well, that is where all the computers were held up.
No worries, though. Just a day, and not worth stress.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AIaddict
There really is no excuse for this. I could come up with 10-20 ways to avoid this. The simple high level solution would be to simply take a minimal ammount of customer data, compile a list, and then do the verifications and collection of missing data (shippind address etc.) when you have free CPU cycles. The process was insanely back end intensive. Have they learned nothing in 4 years? You could also do a staggered pre-order. Oldest iPhones first, then 3G then 3GS upgrade elligible, then early upgrade then new customers. That would have been pretty easy to manage if they only allowed pre-orders through the new app for a day or two.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're not a network engineer. Your suggestion (the one you did provide) presents a whole mess of problems. Processing things gradually, as resources are available, is awesome when you know you have all the necessary data to complete that order and do not need to interact with the customer in any way. There are plenty of other problems with this too.
Would love to hear the other 9?19 solutions you suggest?
On a related note, I saw somewhere else where a person related this to Sprint's failure on the release of the HTC Evo. What is sad is server failure processing thousands of orders. What isn't sad is server failure processing hundreds of thousands (or more). And it isn't even that?it is the refreshes over and over again once things do fall behind. It's hard to get back up and running for a special one-time event when you're being hammered like that.
Unfortunately it's listed at the $699 price - without contract. I'm upgrading from an original iPhone, so I'm way eligible for the upgrade, but the AT&T eligibility portion of the signup process seemed to crash, and I made the reservation anyway. I presume that the Apple Store will be able to adjust the price accordingly when I pick the phone up, although it's anyone's guess whether AT&T's servers will be able to handle all the verification checks for launch day purchases after today's debacle.
This is exactly what happened to me, and I am prepared for loads of disappointment and fun when I go to the Apple Store on 24 June....
Why be surprised? Apple has no control over FedEx. FedEx does quite well with these Apple releases, but I think anybody who has followed Apple knows quite well how quick people are to sue them for any reason they can possibly dream up. Why not a late iPhone?
I'm not surprised. It's just that it is misleading and/or incorrect to say it is shipping on or after June 24 when in fact it will be arriving on or after June 24. If it arrives on June 24, it obviously wasn't shipped on (or after) June 24.
To say the process was frustrating and disappointing would be a massive understatement!!! You'd think by this release, Apple and ATT would've been prepared for the onslaught. Being on the West Coast, I logged on to the Apple online store at 1am when it first came back online and had nothing but problems. Each step of the process would "time out" or result in an "ooops" screen. At 1am!??!!? It took 30 mins to get to the step where it showed my order was being processed--but then the cogged wheel showed up and I gave up. Later, at 10am PST I logged into my Apple account and was able to complete the payment process. Success, but, really it shouldn't have been so convoluted a process.
Does the old $30 unlimited plan, available to some going forward, include tethering??? I saw the 2gb + tethering option when I tried unsuccessfully to pre-order today.
For those of you who are getting your first iPhone and have not had the pleasure of being an AT&T customer, you may want to ask yourself if someone "up there" is telling you something. Cause this is just the beginning. Word to the wise.
This is exactly what happened to me, and I am prepared for loads of disappointment and fun when I go to the Apple Store on 24 June....
That happened to me too. I called AT&T about it. They confirmed that those fees will not apply and said that another customer had the problem and had been reassured by Apple. This was before their phone number went offline, of course.
Quote:
Originally Posted by beast42
I'm not surprised. It's just that it is misleading and/or incorrect to say it is shipping on or after June 24 when in fact it will be arriving on or after June 24. If it arrives on June 24, it obviously wasn't shipped on (or after) June 24.
True. They could definitely word that better. What they do, in practice, is ship everything early to FedEx, who holds the products at distribution centers until release and then sends them out. So they've got time to arrive?they're rarely late. Irrelevant to the wording, but perhaps somewhat reassuring to people who are worried.
Does the old $30 unlimited plan, available to some going forward, include tethering??? I saw the 2gb + tethering option when I tried unsuccessfully to pre-order today.
No. You want tethering, you lose the unlimited plan. You want the unlimited plan, you don't get tethering (unless you jailbreak, and good luck with that on release).
That happened to me too. I called AT&T about it. They confirmed that those fees will not apply and said that another customer had the problem and had been reassured by Apple. This was before their phone number went offline, of course.
True. They could definitely word that better. What they do, in practice, is ship everything early to FedEx, who holds the products at distribution centers until release and then sends them out. So they've got time to arrive?they're rarely late. Irrelevant to the wording, but perhaps somewhat reassuring to people who are worried.
The way AT&T worded it is fine. AT&T worded it that way to protect themselves incase iPhones DO NOT arrive on June 24th. By them saying "on or after" they are not liable for any shipping screw ups.
The way AT&T worded it is fine. AT&T worded it that way to protect themselves incase iPhones DO NOT arrive on June 24th. By them saying "on or after" they are not liable for any shipping screw ups.
Not to belabor the point, but my issue is that it says it will SHIP on or after June 24. It should not say that if in fact it is possible it will be shipping prior to June 24 in order to ARRIVE on or after June 24. They could protect themselves just as well and also be accurate by saying it will ARRIVE on or after June 24.
Don't care. This still falls on Steve and Apple. They've had 4 years to get this shit right.
I'm THIS close to just saying 'fuck it' and going with an Android phone. Really. And I have been a Mac diehard since 2001.
This is unforgivably gawd-awfully bad service.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wurm5150
Wow, all that because you couldn't pre-order...A device that won't be out til next week...A device that will be available until the next device replaces it next year...I can understand the enthusiasm but damn...
People are acting like Apple's going run out of iPhones today and the world will end on June 25.
Oh, I'm getting the iPhone 4. Whether I'll get it on the 24th or after that, we'll see.
No, he's right! There is no excuse for this other than a National disaster / massive power outage!.
Apple spends $ billions refining every detail of the user experience and advertising "It just works!"
A pre-order transaction could have been done with the equivalent of 2 Google/Bing/Yahoo searches, 1 iTunes store purchase or 2 Twitters per pre-order.
Can't Apple handle 1 million transactions in 24 hours?
Google can handle (2 times) that number of searches in 2 minutes.
iTunes can: from the 2008 iPhone 3G: Friday Fiasco - Anatomy of a System Failure
Quote:
The iTunes Store is a heavy-duty, large-scale application that has been processing millions of music and video purchases per day, and countless other requests for data. iTunes sells nearly 32 million songs per day, or about 22,000 e-commerce transactions per minute on average.
But that's not the problem. The problem is that this is a Microsoftian f-up. This does not bode well for Apple's continued service to its customer base.
Then you must know people say this every year at about this time! Such a problem.
Comments
Wow, all that because you couldn't pre-order...A device that won't be out til next week...A device that will be available until the next device replaces it next year...I can understand the enthusiasm but damn...
People are acting like Apple's going run out of iPhones today and the world will end on June 25.
Oh, I'm getting the iPhone 4. Whether I'll get it on the 24th or after that, we'll see.
I've been waiting for it for more than a year.
But that's not the problem. The problem is that this is a Microsoftian fuck-up. This does not bode well for Apple's continued service to its customer base.
So it may be time to jump ship and find a company that's still got its head together in the Tech biz...if one even exists.
Doesn't matter. The HTC Aria launch is going to dwarf the iPhone 4.
In what respect, the clusterf*** with the online processing? Wishful thinking aside, there is no way it can dwarf the iP4 launch, as the Aria is not launching in four countries on its first day, or 18 countries within a month.
I just received an email from ATT about my iPhone 4 order saying that the system could not verify some information and my order was cancelled. I entered everything correctly and even had a receipt with the confirmation.
Cannot expect less from them.
Wow! I don't want to hear that.
Excellent, thanks. As a lawyer, I appreciate cautious language like that (even though it is misleading). As a consumer, I think it sucks.
Why be surprised? Apple has no control over FedEx. FedEx does quite well with these Apple releases, but I think anybody who has followed Apple knows quite well how quick people are to sue them for any reason they can possibly dream up. Why not a late iPhone?
That was not the experience this morning. I kept hanging before it asked for my AT&T number, or the "we'll be back" message kept coming up. Once Apple took my AT&T number, it quickly verified my status. What is also interesting is I heard a number of accounts of people who chose pickup getting through and people who chose delivery having it crap out. It seems to me both companies got caught with their pants down.
I've been playing with it on and off all day, and I spent quite some time in the Apple Store. Initially there was delay on the initial steps, but that cleared up. Right now it is still the AT&T verification that's messing things up. That's where every customer in the Apple Store has been held up since they opened according to the staff, the people who were still waiting, and, well, that is where all the computers were held up.
No worries, though. Just a day, and not worth stress.
There really is no excuse for this. I could come up with 10-20 ways to avoid this. The simple high level solution would be to simply take a minimal ammount of customer data, compile a list, and then do the verifications and collection of missing data (shippind address etc.) when you have free CPU cycles. The process was insanely back end intensive. Have they learned nothing in 4 years? You could also do a staggered pre-order. Oldest iPhones first, then 3G then 3GS upgrade elligible, then early upgrade then new customers. That would have been pretty easy to manage if they only allowed pre-orders through the new app for a day or two.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're not a network engineer. Your suggestion (the one you did provide) presents a whole mess of problems. Processing things gradually, as resources are available, is awesome when you know you have all the necessary data to complete that order and do not need to interact with the customer in any way. There are plenty of other problems with this too.
Would love to hear the other 9?19 solutions you suggest?
On a related note, I saw somewhere else where a person related this to Sprint's failure on the release of the HTC Evo. What is sad is server failure processing thousands of orders. What isn't sad is server failure processing hundreds of thousands (or more). And it isn't even that?it is the refreshes over and over again once things do fall behind. It's hard to get back up and running for a special one-time event when you're being hammered like that.
Unfortunately it's listed at the $699 price - without contract. I'm upgrading from an original iPhone, so I'm way eligible for the upgrade, but the AT&T eligibility portion of the signup process seemed to crash, and I made the reservation anyway. I presume that the Apple Store will be able to adjust the price accordingly when I pick the phone up, although it's anyone's guess whether AT&T's servers will be able to handle all the verification checks for launch day purchases after today's debacle.
This is exactly what happened to me, and I am prepared for loads of disappointment and fun when I go to the Apple Store on 24 June....
Why be surprised? Apple has no control over FedEx. FedEx does quite well with these Apple releases, but I think anybody who has followed Apple knows quite well how quick people are to sue them for any reason they can possibly dream up. Why not a late iPhone?
I'm not surprised. It's just that it is misleading and/or incorrect to say it is shipping on or after June 24 when in fact it will be arriving on or after June 24. If it arrives on June 24, it obviously wasn't shipped on (or after) June 24.
This is exactly what happened to me, and I am prepared for loads of disappointment and fun when I go to the Apple Store on 24 June....
Same here, I think it should hopefully be smoothish though hopefully at least
This is exactly what happened to me, and I am prepared for loads of disappointment and fun when I go to the Apple Store on 24 June....
That happened to me too. I called AT&T about it. They confirmed that those fees will not apply and said that another customer had the problem and had been reassured by Apple. This was before their phone number went offline, of course.
I'm not surprised. It's just that it is misleading and/or incorrect to say it is shipping on or after June 24 when in fact it will be arriving on or after June 24. If it arrives on June 24, it obviously wasn't shipped on (or after) June 24.
True. They could definitely word that better. What they do, in practice, is ship everything early to FedEx, who holds the products at distribution centers until release and then sends them out. So they've got time to arrive?they're rarely late. Irrelevant to the wording, but perhaps somewhat reassuring to people who are worried.
Does the old $30 unlimited plan, available to some going forward, include tethering??? I saw the 2gb + tethering option when I tried unsuccessfully to pre-order today.
No. You want tethering, you lose the unlimited plan. You want the unlimited plan, you don't get tethering (unless you jailbreak, and good luck with that on release).
That happened to me too. I called AT&T about it. They confirmed that those fees will not apply and said that another customer had the problem and had been reassured by Apple. This was before their phone number went offline, of course.
True. They could definitely word that better. What they do, in practice, is ship everything early to FedEx, who holds the products at distribution centers until release and then sends them out. So they've got time to arrive?they're rarely late. Irrelevant to the wording, but perhaps somewhat reassuring to people who are worried.
The way AT&T worded it is fine. AT&T worded it that way to protect themselves incase iPhones DO NOT arrive on June 24th. By them saying "on or after" they are not liable for any shipping screw ups.
The way AT&T worded it is fine. AT&T worded it that way to protect themselves incase iPhones DO NOT arrive on June 24th. By them saying "on or after" they are not liable for any shipping screw ups.
Not to belabor the point, but my issue is that it says it will SHIP on or after June 24. It should not say that if in fact it is possible it will be shipping prior to June 24 in order to ARRIVE on or after June 24. They could protect themselves just as well and also be accurate by saying it will ARRIVE on or after June 24.
Don't care. This still falls on Steve and Apple. They've had 4 years to get this shit right.
I'm THIS close to just saying 'fuck it' and going with an Android phone. Really. And I have been a Mac diehard since 2001.
This is unforgivably gawd-awfully bad service.
Wow, all that because you couldn't pre-order...A device that won't be out til next week...A device that will be available until the next device replaces it next year...I can understand the enthusiasm but damn...
People are acting like Apple's going run out of iPhones today and the world will end on June 25.
Oh, I'm getting the iPhone 4. Whether I'll get it on the 24th or after that, we'll see.
No, he's right! There is no excuse for this other than a National disaster / massive power outage!.
Apple spends $ billions refining every detail of the user experience and advertising "It just works!"
A pre-order transaction could have been done with the equivalent of 2 Google/Bing/Yahoo searches, 1 iTunes store purchase or 2 Twitters per pre-order.
Can't Apple handle 1 million transactions in 24 hours?
Google can handle (2 times) that number of searches in 2 minutes.
http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/16954.asp
iTunes can: from the 2008 iPhone 3G: Friday Fiasco - Anatomy of a System Failure
The iTunes Store is a heavy-duty, large-scale application that has been processing millions of music and video purchases per day, and countless other requests for data. iTunes sells nearly 32 million songs per day, or about 22,000 e-commerce transactions per minute on average.
http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/iphone3g/fiasco.html
Apple fucked up! "It just doesn't work!"
.
I've been waiting for it for more than a year.
But that's not the problem. The problem is that this is a Microsoftian f-up. This does not bode well for Apple's continued service to its customer base.
Then you must know people say this every year at about this time! Such a problem.