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Apple's iPhone Activation Servers Experiencing Extended Outage

seecoolguy

seecoolguy

macrumors 6502
Nov 28, 2007
256
34
Steve.P.JobsFan said:
It's technology. Technology is known to occasionally have a problem and occasionally break.

As long as they get it running again within a reasonable amount of time, there is nothing "outrageous" about this. Relax! :)
Click to expand...


It's been a week. that's too long in the tech world.
 
D

Daveoc64

macrumors 601
Jan 16, 2008
4,074
92
Bristol, UK
The real problem here is that an expensive device that you OWN requires "activation" at all

It's effectively getting permission from Apple to let you use it

What happens when Apple does not or cannot run these servers for a particular device is not yet known...
 
B

BigHonkingDeal

macrumors 6502a
Feb 8, 2009
832
1,027
Fort Pierce
Daveoc64 said:
The real problem here is that an expensive device that you OWN requires "activation" at all

It's effectively getting permission from Apple to let you use it

What happens when Apple does not or cannot run these servers for a particular device is not yet known...
Click to expand...


I have been asking this myself for years. Purchased full price or not everybody will end up paying the full price eventually and that's a contract between you and the service provider.

What would people say if they have to "activate" their toasters before they could use it :)
 
M

mrbucket2

macrumors newbie
Jun 13, 2012
11
0
A friend of mine that I had running iOS 7 for me through my developer account to test some things, especially since it was on an iPhone 4 and not the 5 I currently am running it on.

A couple of days ago (this was still after the initial developer outage) he drove to my house and somehow the phone deactivated itself with no external input from either of us or anything else that I know of. I tried fruitlessly probably 10-15 times to get it to reactivate but it just refused to do it. Fortunately, I was able to restore his phone to 6.1.3 just fine and he luckily had a fairly recent iOS 6 compatible backup on iCloud that I loaded onto it right then. It had no trouble activating iOS 6, but 7 was just not happening at the time. I'm betting something related to this hack/outage/whatever was the cause of this issue.
 
tdtran1025

tdtran1025

macrumors 6502
Dec 26, 2011
275
0
Live and die by the sword.
Getting rid of subsidies brings the process closer to simplified activation.
 
sbailey4

sbailey4

macrumors 601
Dec 5, 2011
4,500
3,134
USA
MacMan1620 said:
They should call this website macTrolling. The comments on here are ridiculous. It's a temporary server issue. Get over it people.
Click to expand...

"A" server issue? Really? So the multiple billion $$ Apple has "A" server that has failed. (probably the one hard drive that was in it). Yes crap happens I get that (I am in IT and have been for 25+ yrs). However these days redundancy is more important that ever. There is no excuse for a multibillion$ company like Apple with multiple datacenters all over the place to be down totally. Especially for activations. Not to mention a week long outage of the developer site. With the resources they have there is simply no excuse. Sure an outage is possible and understandable, but it should be resolved swiftly not in days and weeks. I never had that luxury at the small business I worked for. If we were down it there was no way a week could pass and my answer would be "Well things happen relax people"
 
C

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,390
19,458
sbailey4 said:
"A" server issue? Really? So the multiple billion $$ Apple has "A" server that has failed. (probably the one hard drive that was in it). Yes crap happens I get that (I am in IT and have been for 25+ yrs). However these days redundancy is more important that ever. There is no excuse for a multibillion$ company like Apple with multiple datacenters all over the place to be down totally. Especially for activations. Not to mention a week long outage of the developer site. With the resources they have there is simply no excuse. Sure an outage is possible and understandable, but it should be resolved swiftly not in days and weeks. I never had that luxury at the small business I worked for. If we were down it there was no way a week could pass and my answer would be "Well things happen relax people"
Click to expand...
A server issue usually doesn't mean something that applies to an individual server, it means more of a server-side issue of some sort.
 
sbailey4

sbailey4

macrumors 601
Dec 5, 2011
4,500
3,134
USA
C DM said:
A server issue usually doesn't mean something that applies to an individual server, it means more of a server-side issue of some sort.
Click to expand...

Yes I get it. That was a sarcastic remark. Point being Apple has the most resources available than probably any tech company in the world. If the entire datacenter in NC went offline with the thousands of servers in there, there should be a redundant datacenter that could be rerouted to. Especially for activations. Redundant everything? Probably not but certain things like activations for new devices or folks restoring a jacked up device, yes. Again I am more looking at the developer portal issue that's been a week. Man that's an eternity in the tech world, just sayin.

And to the folks with the "relax it will be ok", sure it will. (Love the video BTW so true it is) But the reality is Apple is better than that (or used to be).
 
Nermal

Nermal

Moderator
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
20,639
4,039
New Zealand
Does anyone know what activation actually does? I'm not familiar with the "inner workings" of iOS so can someone please explain why it'd need to talk to Apple in the first place?
 
Essex711

Essex711

macrumors member
Sep 20, 2012
38
1
NY
macfacts said:
why do iPhones even have to be activated? With my Galaxy Note 2, I just bought it full price and just inserted my sim card. No need to ask permission to use what I just bought.
Click to expand...

You could, but what happens if you lose your phone and can't use certain features as Find my iPhone, make a backup from an older saved data file, stream your music from the cloud, etc.....
 
eltaurus

eltaurus

macrumors regular
Oct 23, 2012
155
5
this is the problem.. your device is not yours until apple say so.. imagine the frustration you buy / restore your iphone and you can't use it for i don't know how long ??
 
S

SeniorGato1

macrumors regular
Jun 28, 2010
219
11
This would explain why I couldn't activate my mom's iPhone 4 this morning and unlocking it with ATT. Here I thought the unlocking process went haywire.
 
Glideslope

Glideslope

macrumors 604
Dec 7, 2007
7,942
5,373
The Adirondacks.
War

IMO, we are witnessing a coordinated attack on Apple Systems with large resources. An attempt to embarrass Apple, slow down iPhone growth, delay iOS7 as much as possible.

Expect more. Funding probably from S. Korea. ;)
 
A

arbitter

macrumors regular
Nov 12, 2010
109
1
Belgium
Dang, I'm no dev and I don't have an iPhone that needs to be reactivated, but all these outages nowadays, would seriously piss me off for a phone that expensive. Seriously, a phone that is priced over 900 € (for the 64GB iPhone 5), you can not be happy about this.
 
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