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Apple Claims Largest Ever First-Day iPhone Pre-Orders of 600,000

399?!?! No Thanks.

I was surprised when I wen tot preorder an iPhone 4 that I was going to have to shell out 399 plus 18 to upgrade my 3GS. DOesn't ATT and Apple want the business? Instead, they told me I have to wait until February 18th to upgrade for 199. Umm... I think I'll pay the ETF and get a Droid, that's cheaper than paying 399 for an iPhone 4 right now... I am so bummed, because I was lookign forward to it... If I have to wait until February, I might as well hold out until June 2011, when the next one is announced. Bummer. :(
 
Does anyone know what this RESERVED iPhone fine print means?!

Sounds like nothing is guaranteed, even if you reserved a phone.

Pre-authorization does not guarantee iPhone availability at an Apple Retail Store. iPhone is sold on a first-come, first-served basis.
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There is ZERO overlap here.

ValSalva said:
iPhone 4 will start to eat into the iPad's sales. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the iPad sales numbers start to level off substantially in the next couple of months.
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The devices are so different that one will not impact the other at all. If anything many of us are waiting for iPad version 2. If we are lucky that will happen in the fall.
 
Hmm...I expected several times that number. Maybe many people are buying at launch instead of doing pre-orders.
 
bitWrangler said:
Nope, that's 600000 _successful_ customers, which equates to many more actual attempts. Each customer attempt probably results in several queries to the server to get acct info, to verify eligibility, etc. So one can't simply take 600K iphones and divide by 23 and say "that's a wimpy load".
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Exactly. I tried probably 2 dozen times myself during the day and then downloaded the iPhone Apple store app and tried multiple times with that. Finally got a reserved phone at the local store for the 24th.

They were getting hammered.
 
MacBoucher said:
I was surprised when I wen tot preorder an iPhone 4 that I was going to have to shell out 399 plus 18 to upgrade my 3GS. DOesn't ATT and Apple want the business? Instead, they told me I have to wait until February 18th to upgrade for 199. Umm... I think I'll pay the ETF and get a Droid, that's cheaper than paying 399 for an iPhone 4 right now... I am so bummed, because I was lookign forward to it... If I have to wait until February, I might as well hold out until June 2011, when the next one is announced. Bummer. :(
Click to expand...

they do want your business... but they only want it if they can make money and giving you another deep discount on a phone when your first one isn't paid off isn't going to make them money.

do yourself a favor, next time learn what and how subsidized phones work before complaining.
 
@ MacBoucher, at least they offered you early eligibility pricing instead of full retail. Remember, the prices you are thinking of with a Droid are THE SAME PRICES AS THE IPHONES, while the iphone has faster components and larger internal storage. The only reason it is higher is because while you are eligible for a new contract with another company who sells android, you aren't with AT&T. You aren't being overcharged, and if you pay the ETF you are being retarded because it will end up being more expensive.
 
bitWrangler said:
Nope, that's 600000 _successful_ customers, which equates to many more actual attempts. Each customer attempt probably results in several queries to the server to get acct info, to verify eligibility, etc. So one can't simply take 600K iphones and divide by 23 and say "that's a wimpy load".
Click to expand...


*Exactly* my point. The real problem was *not* server load - it was something else. The "something else" did increase server load, due to customer frustration.

Multiply by 10, and it's still not an impossible load. Certainly not something they'd have to mortgage the company to handle. However, it certainly may have been an *unexpected* load, with no contingency plan for handling it.

Nor should there necessarily have been one. (A contingency plan for 10X load.) There weren't 10X orders, despite some ridiculous statements saying there were. Really? 3GS had only 60,000 pre-orders? (Anybody have the facts?) 10X orders would have been a happy ending. Just issue a statement, wow, we've really been overwhelmed, sorry, we'll try again tomorrow. NO problem issuing that statement under those circumstances, vs. the mess they had.

Frankly, the system should have been shut down in the morning when the problems were discovered. Start over the next day, or the next week, whenever the problem is fixed.

As far as I can tell, the servers actually *did* handle the load - even at 10X expected load. The problem lies somewhere else. I'd guess that no matter how many servers they'd added, there still would have been the same problems.

I think it was just faulty software. Period. Faulty software that somebody should have had the good sense to shut down. But they were too proud to say "we are shutting it down because it's flawed and we don't know why".
 
What got me was that with every attempt, I would get to a different level of the transaction before it would crap out (after having to re-enter my information each time) ... why was the service not throttled to provide those that got in, a pleasant experience, and a simple "Due to demand, please try again" screen for those that did not get in.

This is only pre-order afterall.
 
That's alot

Question: ATT charged my card already for my preordered 32gig Black phone, I see it in my bank account, but have not received a confirmation email like they said they would send me when I was in the ATT store ordering it yesterday morning. ATT online acct gave me an order number though for the 32gig iPhone 4.

Should I assume that things are in order for me or are they really messed up over the status of my account. They said they weren't charging until they ship the phone... :confused::confused::confused:
 
Aside from which, why should people who are too lazy to preorder receive priority over those who did?
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Hahaha your logic is scary-ridiculous. I don't see how you could be too lazy to sit at your computer, however it sounds like you're too lazy to get in the car and drive to the store. This is America and those who work hardest are rewarded greatest.
 
brianbobcat said:
I don't see why it would be so prohibitive for them (both Apple AND AT&T) to have a massive amount of servers to be able to handle the rush. Sure it'd be a waste for most of the year, but the frustration faced by me and EVERYONE else yesterday was ridiculous for a 4th year in a row now! I haven't heard of one story where the person was able to order smoothly and/or quickly.

Now here's a question, would Verizon be able to handle this amount of load on a single day?

-Brian
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First, I fired up my Apple Store App yesterday afternoon--entered the information and submitted my pre-order. Took no more than a few minutes. So there is one story of a smooth order.

Second, why spend all that money on servers that are needed ONCE a year (max)? Even ticketbastard crashes during releases of tickets for shows with unsually high demand.


People have grown increasingly impatient and have too high of expectations for everything these days. Without flawless performance, people start pounding away at their computers like a bunch of children who didn't get their afternoon nap. The whining about this not being fair-they should have done it this way or that way... blah, blah, blah... Seriously? Sure, you deserve to be annoyed or frustrated--but the reaction around here is a little much. Remember people, its ONLY A PHONE.
 
brianbobcat said:
I don't see why it would be so prohibitive for them (both Apple AND AT&T) to have a massive amount of servers to be able to handle the rush. Sure it'd be a waste for most of the year, but the frustration faced by me and EVERYONE else yesterday was ridiculous for a 4th year in a row now! I haven't heard of one story where the person was able to order smoothly and/or quickly.

Now here's a question, would Verizon be able to handle this amount of load on a single day?

-Brian
Click to expand...

probably not a server issue but a database issue. you can't read and write to the same data at the same time. when they pull your account the database may lock other records as well. when they make changes to pre-order the iphone it won't happen because records are locked due to other accounts being pulled.

it's more complicated than that and it depends on the way the database is set up as well as the application servers involved and the applications. it's not like there is one server that handles it all. it's web servers in the front, database on the back end, a few middleware apps in between and data going out to npac and maybe someone else during the process

and you cant just upgrade this stuff. application versions are very dependent and it requires a lot of custom code to be written and any upgrade will take months or years for an organization of AT&T's size. there was a nice article in CIO magazine a few years ago how AT&T tried to upgrade their CRM software and it was a failure after almost a year of work.
 
Impressive! I guess Apple knows what its doing :p, when I first saw the iPad's, I honestly didn't think it would be successful, but I guess I was wrong :p..
 
Hawaii ordering

Finally got thru using the iPhone store app at 10:54p Hawaii time after trying all day. One way to "create" buzz about a product is to have a "shortage" like the Wii. To think that Apple wouldn't have some idea about how many orders they'd be getting is naive. These guys are master strategists about marketing. And of course any #fail can be attributed to AT&T further giving them the excuse to open it up to different carriers if they so choose. To be honest I looked at other phones on Verizon because of the PITA pre-order process but didn't find anything I'd like to have...
 
Now the BIG question

With that record number of Preorders, launch day activation ios going to be a nightmare don't you think ?

My little suggestion (and maybe prayer) to Apple / AT&T :

Please try to prepare your servers for a LOT of activations on 6/24
 
bpfesq said:
People have grown increasingly impatient and have too high of expectations for everything these days. Without flawless performance, people start pounding away at their computers like a bunch of children who didn't get their afternoon nap. The whining about this not being fair-they should have done it this way or that way... blah, blah, blah... Seriously? Sure, you deserve to be annoyed or frustrated--but the reaction around here is a little much. Remember people, its ONLY A PHONE.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of how I had to walk to school in my day .... uphill, both ways. :p
 
AT&T was sold out yesterday a little before 6pm EST. They sold their share in a little over 14 hours. The same was true with supplies almost ever where. The initial sales numbers would have been well over 7 per second world wide. AT&T could have used some cloud based hosting for some of the extra demand, and that might have let them sell out even quicker. But with over 10x more demand this year, that's hard to account for. And they likely sell more units overall because now the iPhone is the "it" thing to get. There's nothing like a delay and hundreds of thousands of orders in a few hours to spike demand even more.
 
anyone have experience with 1st day iPhone sales?

Spent an hour at the Apple Store, trying to get a pre-order through. They finally suggested I "come back tomorrow, it's not like we'll sell out".

Today they say I'll have to get in line next Thursday. They should have "plenty" for 1st day sales.

Do I stand a chance? I wouldn't care, but I planned to use the tethering for my wi-fi-less vacation the week of July 4th. :( No iPhone means no internet for the whole trip. I'll never make it!!!
 
MacBoucher said:
I was surprised when I wen tot preorder an iPhone 4 that I was going to have to shell out 399 plus 18 to upgrade my 3GS. DOesn't ATT and Apple want the business? Instead, they told me I have to wait until February 18th to upgrade for 199. Umm... I think I'll pay the ETF and get a Droid, that's cheaper than paying 399 for an iPhone 4 right now... I am so bummed, because I was lookign forward to it... If I have to wait until February, I might as well hold out until June 2011, when the next one is announced. Bummer. :(
Click to expand...

It's called a contract that you signed upon buying and activating the iPhone.

Seriously, people you need to get off your high horse and stop thinking you can buy the new iPhone every year at the loss of someone else( even the "evil" company called AT&T).

What is going to happen when you sign a contract with an employer? Are you going to complain when something that you signed limits you what you can say/do( such as a NDA)? You can always break it, but prepare to be fired.......
 
xizar said:
What irritates me is that apparently server issues made them sell me a few *extra* iphones.

Finding $900 missing from my bank did *not* make me a happy camper. :(

Fortunately the order status page let me cancel the extras.

So there should be an extra three iphones available to deliver on the 24th.
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If this happened to a majority of buyers...they could be grossly over-counting their sales...
 
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