Rotten Apple
iPhone 3G: Worst product launch ever?
No, it’s not that bad. It’s not like Windows Vista bad. But it’s sure as hell not going smoothly.
Wednesday night, Apple’s new “MobileMe” service was supposed to go live. Granted, that is the worst product name since Windows ME, but MobileMe is something I actually want — instant syncing of most any data I like between my laptop, desktop and iPhone. Only it didn’t go live Wednesday night. Or any time on Thursday. Today it works, at times, a little, in fits and starts.
And so many people are activating their iPhone 3G models this morning, that I can’t even get iTunes to update my old phone’s firmware to 2.0 — even though it let me take the 218MB download earlier this morning. Sad fact is, Apple’s (and AT&T’s?) servers aren’t up to the task. What did they think was going to happen today?
The good news is, the new App Store works just fine. I’ve downloaded four iPhone applications already without a hint of trouble. But until Apple lets me install the new firmware, all those apps can do is take up space on my hard drive. Fun!
The bad news is, this is pretty ugly. New phone buyers are getting sent home to activate their iPhones — and they probably won’t have any better luck than I’m having right now. When will their phones stop being bricks? Today? This weekend? Monday?
Even at the nicely reduced price, I’d expect better service from Apple and AT&T.
UPDATE: Speaking of bricked phones, mine makes a nice paperweight right now. iTunes finally deigned to install the 2.0 firmware, but it doesn’t quite work. As in, my phone shows up in iTunes with a Microsoft-style cryptic error message. “We could not complete your iTunes Store request. An unknown error occurred (-9838). There was an error in the iTunes store. Please try again later.”
UPDATE: I’m so not the only one.
May we be dealing with crapware?
David –
Crapware? Nah.
For the daring, Apple made the 2.0 software self-installable on Wednesday. And the reviews were uniformly positive. 2.0 doesn’t do a whole lot more than let you install 3rd-party apps, but that’s still a nice little jump in functionality.
The problem lies with Apple’s inability to cope with the demand. They should have seen this coming. Or maybe they did, and just didn’t care. Either way, the end result sucks.
After eleventyteen tries, I finally got 2.0 to install, and then to sync back up with iTunes. After it finishes restoring my iPhone from its backup, it shouldn’t be bricked anymore.
But the fact that it’s taken me three hours to perform a simple firmware upgrade, with no warning that I was risking temporary brickosity… well, that sucks, too.
Well I hope you are correct as I know my youngest is going to want to go to college with one and of course it is going to be my nickel (by agreement her summer earnings are going for a room and board upgrade).
Never drink the cool-aid right away. Let others verify that all the pieces are included and shaped correctly first. This rule applies equally to cool-aid supplied by Apple, Microsoft, Sony, or Lego.
Installed 2.0 through iTunes in about 15 minutes. Seems to work fine. No plans to upgrade to a 3G phone, though. I’d rather eat a higher cost up front for the phone rather than pay a higher monthly bill.
Miracle of miracles, I had absolutely no problem downloading, backing up, installing, and rebooting Friday morning. For whatever reason, the whole process went smoothly for me. I’m usually the snake-bit one.
Amongst a group of fellow Apple investors, I appear to have been the only one to not run into problems. Everyone else had issues. Some still are….
This was a Charley Foxtrot of the highest order. I don’t know if Apple just screwed up on server capacity, or if there were bugs in the process that only came out when the roll-out started. Regardless, I’m betting heads rolled on Friday.
I would really like to read the inside story on this. It will probably make for a fascinating case study on how not to do a world-wide software and hardware rollout. Apple was due for a fuck-up, but this was a bad time to execute on it!
By the way, Steve. 2.0 does a bit more than just open up the App Store. Complete synchronization with Exchange Server for one. I got my iPhone synced up with my work server in 2 minutes. Like I’ve said before–Watch out RIM. You also get synchronization with MobileMe, multi-select in email for trash, etc.
(I know, I know. I’m starting to sound like an Apple evangelist!)
You might also be interested in the Bloomberg iPhone App. Really nice interface; great stock charts. And I’m not sure, but they might be realtime. I didn’t get a chance to verify on Friday afternoon, as I was out-and-about, but I checked AAPL on Bloomberg vs AAPL on the stock chart app Apple supplies, and the numbers were quite different. I’m going to confirm tomorrow morning.
Yeah, I’m finally up and running — and loving 2.0. I was already a .Mac subscriber (Yes, Virginia, there really is a .Mac subscriber), so I’m loving the push email, calendars, etc.
But Charlie-Foxtrot is right. It took three hours to get 2.0 installed, and a day to get it syncing with my desktop. Apple let me install MobileMe on the desktop machine on Friday, but didn’t let me update the laptop until Saturday night. And the Me.com site is sluggish and, for me, mostly useless. The web ain’t ready to host desktop apps.
Overall, 2.0 is worth the hassle, eve if only for the iPhone Remote app. Running iTunes through any wi-fi-connected speakers, from anywhere on the network?
Sweet!
Update: The individual stock tracker on Bloomberg does not appear to be live data.
Also, a connection at AT&T indicates the major problems on Friday were due to an iTunes server crash. No details other than that. No idea if it was an out-of-the-blue crash, a system overload, etc. It took Apple quite a while to recover, regardless.
And MobileMe still appears to be not.