Tag Archives | Apple. iPhone

Want an iPhone 4? Get in Line

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 17, 2010 at 7:30 am

With recent Apple blockbusters like all the iPhones and the iPad, there’s been a useful secret shopping tip: If you wanted a product pronto but had an inexplicable resistance to waiting in a bizarrely long line, you could wait until early evening on launch day and then stroll into an Apple Store. By then, the throngs had dispersed, and the shelves were still well-stocked with shiny new gadgets.

(You could also order online and avoid a shopping trip altogether, of course, but I’ve always been impressed by the retail buyers who could resist temptation for just a few hours in return for hassle-free buying…)

With the iPhone 4, apparently, it’s not going to be like that. The phone is debuting on June 24th, but the black model is sold out for weeks, and the white one still hasn’t gone on sale at all:

Of course, it says the phone will ship by July 14th, so there’s some chance Apple will catch up with demand more quickly than that. But I wonder if it’s going to feel like there’s a great worldwide iPhone shortage for awhile?

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AT&T Presses Pause on iPhone Presales

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 16, 2010 at 9:46 am

Despite yesterday’s iPhone preordering meltdown, a heck of a lot of people reserved phoness. AT&T statement:

iPhone 4 pre-order sales yesterday were 10-times higher than the first day of pre-ordering for the iPhone 3G S last year. Consumers are clearly excited about iPhone 4, AT&T’s more affordable data plans and our early upgrade pricing.

Given this unprecedented demand and our current expectations for our iPhone 4 inventory levels when the device is available June 24, we’re suspending pre-ordering today in order to fulfill the orders we’ve already received.

The availability of additional inventory will determine if we can resume taking pre-orders.

In addition to unprecedented pre-order sales, yesterday there were more than 13 million visits to AT&T’s website where customers can check to see if they are eligible to upgrade to a new phone; that number is about 3-times higher than the previous record for eligibility upgrade checks in one day.

We are working hard to bring iPhone 4 to as many of our customers as soon as possible.

Ten times as many preorders as for the 3GS? Amazing. I’m still not a believer in “AT&T is locking people in to deny them the option of a Verizon iPhone that will be announced any day now” conspiracy theories, but that’s a lot of folks who are planning to be on AT&T through 2012…

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Report: AT&T Didn't Test iPhone Preorder System Thoroughly

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 15, 2010 at 12:48 pm

As the iPhone 4 preorder disaster worsens by the minute, the blame looks to fall squarely on AT&T’s shoulders as we learn more about what went wrong. The most damaging of these may be an source close to the carrier which now claims the system which AT&T was not tested before the launch.

The source works at a third party facility that processes the orders for AT&T. Apparently, the reports of users being able to login to others accounts even though they were attempting to log into their own could be related to a botched update on AT&T’s side related to fraud.

It’s not clear if those attempting to upgrade are the only ones that may have had their information opened up to others, but the source did say problems like this have happened before. As of the time I write this, neither AT&T nor Apple have made any public statements on the matter.

AT&T’s iPhone 4 eligibility page remains down, although its online account application has been put back online. I have a request for comment out to both companies.

[Hat tip: Gizmodo]

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iPhone 4 Ordering an Embarrassment for AT&T, Apple

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 15, 2010 at 10:31 am

If you are even attempting to pre-order an iPhone 4 today, our best advice is: don’t! Both Apple and AT&T are experiencing a multitude of problems just keeping the system up–and Gizmodo has even reported that AT&T’s online system is exposing upgraders’ accounts to others.

From what people are reporting, the problem  seems to be that both AT&T employees and at-home shoppers are using a similar web interface. Now, we can’t confirm that both are one and the same, but if they are it means thousands of orders every minute are dumping into the same application.

AT&T retail stores have resorted to using pen and paper to take down names, credit card numbers, and phone numbers as the entire online system has been taken down. Don’t expect to visit Apple’s site to complete your transaction either –it’s not working either.

Worst of all, it appears the mad rush for iPhone 4 has exposed a serious hole in AT&T’s servers. Gizmodo reports that it has received several reports of users logging into their own accounts (or I should say attempting to), and being greeted with the account information of somebody else.

So who’s to blame for this one? Let’s hear from our always opinionated Technologizer readers in the comments…

Update 1: Harry McCracken reports on Twitter that the Apple Store iPhone application reservation system is appearing to fail, which makes it hard to discern whether your reservation has actually been submitted. I’ve also received an unconfirmed report that neither AT&T nor Apple are accepting phone calls at this point.

Update 2: One of our regular readers Steven Fisher makes a very good point: “Thousands of queries per minute into the same application shouldn’t be a problem. Thousands of queries per SECOND shouldn’t be a problem. Perhaps the application or the database behind it performs like crap, but scalable web interfaces are not exactly an unattainable holy grail.”

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132 Years of the Videophone: From Futuristic Fantasy to Flops to FaceTime

Posted by Benj Edwards on June 14, 2010 at 12:38 am

Last week, Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 4 with FaceTime video calling capabilities brought the videophone back to the forefront of the media’s attention.  Steve Jobs’ keynote made it sound like FaceTime will bring video phone calls to consumers for the first time. But the idea of a two-way communications device that transmits pictures as well as sound is as old as the phone itself.

Economic factors have kept it out of the average consumer’s reach until the last few decades,  and the public has repeatedly greeted the concept–in stand-alone form, at least–with apathy. Still, inventors and dreamers keep coming back to the notion that the videophone is the way of the future.

Let’s take a stroll through videophone history to find out where things went wrong–and right–and how we got to the iPhone 4 and its rivals.

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The FTC to Investigate Apple?

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 11, 2010 at 5:47 pm

There are multiple things about Apple’s recent behavior in relation to third-party development tools and ad networks that don’t thrill me. As a fan of free enterprise, however, I’m not thrilled with the prospect of the federal government possibly stepping in and telling the company how to run its business–at least not as long as the iPhone’s share of the smartphone market isn’t monopolistic. (Which it isn’t: It’s not even the best-selling handset.)

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AT&T's iPhone 4 Deals for Recent iPhone 3GS Buyers

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 11, 2010 at 5:29 pm

If you’re reading this–and you are–I suspect the chances that you bought an iPhone 3GS in the last few weeks are close to zilch. Assuming that you wanted to buy an iPhone at all, you were biding your time with the expectation that the new iPhone would be available in June or July.

But there are such folks as people who buy the current iPhone immediately before the new one is announced. And AT&T seems to be making a good-faith effort to help them avoid buyers’ remorse. The logistics are a little complicated, but people who bought iPhones after May 7th will be able to upgrade to the iPhone 4 when it arrives on June 24th.

Even if you buy an iPhone 3GS right this minute–I’d advise against it–you’ll qualify for AT&T’s 30-day money back guarantee and could theoretically return it and get an iPhone 4 before your trial period ends.

Now that we know that, is there anyone out there who thinks that AT&T’s upgrade policies for the new iPhone are unreasonable?

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