Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Claims Largest Ever First-Day iPhone Pre-Orders of 600,000
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I think it means they are using these reservations as a count of how many phones they need to ship to each store. I don't think they are holding a phone in your phone. Which is why I last minute ordered one to be shipped.
Apple doesn't host all of their systems. They use companies like Amazon and Rackspace to deliver their systems through cloud computing. They pay by the load. Sometime they simply can't keep up even with ramping up resources.
problems
So, with this ridiculously LOW number (even though it is reportedly 10x the 3Gs sales - which I don't believe) I think there are going to be some unhappy people based on THINKING they have orders and actually NOT having orders.
600K is NOTHING, there's no way that that many people over a period of 20 hours, brought down an entire ecommerce system and forced the bottlenecks. All the while, people were ordering via the itunes iphone app, and getting orders (for pickup) through.
Something is missing here, it will either be numbers, or iphones.
So, with this ridiculously LOW number (even though it is reportedly 10x the 3Gs sales - which I don't believe) I think there are going to be some unhappy people based on THINKING they have orders and actually NOT having orders.
600K is NOTHING, there's no way that that many people over a period of 20 hours, brought down an entire ecommerce system and forced the bottlenecks. All the while, people were ordering via the itunes iphone app, and getting orders (for pickup) through.
Something is missing here, it will either be numbers, or iphones.
An excellent theory, I think a quite likely explanation.
This is exactly the problem we had when I was working at a large console-game maker bringing up the beta of a much-anticipated game with online play.
We had database locking issues due to poorly-tested software. It wasn't that the load was that great (though we did underestimate the initial onslaught) but faulty coding. The result was cascades of locks, with nothing able to proceed. The problem was solved by triaging and shutting off unnecessary services. (So, for example, top scores couldn't be viewed.) The system was down for a few hours after the midnight rollout, and was at least limping by morning.
Load-testing had been done, but didn't catch the problem. Coverage was incomplete, and the load test was better behaved than juvenile users.
It was embarrassing, but not a disaster. The actual roll-out a month later went smoothly. ATT, unfortunately, didn't have the advantage of a beta.
no, not at all... there is no reason to have the capacity just lying around.
they just needed to add capacity for that one day. which is very possible, and very easy.
they just totally underestimated the capacity they would need.
and since it's ATT, they obviously didn't cover the high side... they just wanted the minimum they could possibly get away with. good work.
because THEY DON'T HAVE TO.
this is the future, guys... adding capacity for one day is pretty simple. you add the servers for the big day, then take them away the next.
at this hosting company, we do it all the time. the Grammys don't need tons of servers year round... only on the ONE NIGHT they are on. and so they plan for that.
An excellent theory, I think a quite likely explanation.
This is exactly the problem we had when I was working at a large console-game maker bringing up the beta of a much-anticipated game with online play.
We had database locking issues due to poorly-tested software. It wasn't that the load was that great (though we did underestimate the initial onslaught) but faulty coding. The result was cascades of locks, with nothing able to proceed. The problem was solved by triaging and shutting off unnecessary services. (So, for example, top scores couldn't be viewed.) The system was down for a few hours after the midnight rollout, and was at least limping by morning.
Load-testing had been done, but didn't catch the problem. Coverage was incomplete, and the load test was better behaved than juvenile users.
It was embarrassing, but not a disaster. The actual roll-out a month later went smoothly. ATT, unfortunately, didn't have the advantage of a beta.
one time after a software upgrade at work the same thing happened and the solution was to recreate the indexes but not with best practices. ended up creating a clustered index on an interger column that wasn't unique, but it worked like a charm due to the queries hitting that table. in some cases they returned millions of rows of data and locked up the entire table
I didn't read through the whole thread here, but I did reserve one for pickup at my Apple Store yesterday. I also (just now) checked into having one shipped to my place instead...now the Apple.com site is saying 'ships by July 2nd', so they've at least slipped by a week.
veriz
Has anyone ever been a Verizon customer? How are they so much better? I've only ever been an AT&T customer and don't really have any complaints.
Has anyone ever been a Verizon customer? How are they so much better? I've only ever been an AT&T customer and don't really have any complaints.
What you're missing is that those are not 600,000 unique hits at the servers. I tried no fewer than 40 times to get the phone I eventually secured last night for delivery on the 24th.
If everyone tried an average of 40 attempts, that is 24,000,000 hits. And those aren't "brief" hits, as with a "yes or no" poll on this site. Those are prolonged transaction attempts, pulling up secure account data from AT&T and Apple servers. I find it to be very impressive. Plus, the bulk of those occurred in a narrower time window than 24 hours. Probably more like 18 to 19 hours max with the even greater traffic in a 12 hour window.
You can get off your high horse right now. People have every right to pre-order. I won't go to an AT&T store, they're unhelpful and worthless, and my nearest Apple store is 2.5 hours away. I'm glad you have 5 hours extra time to drive and then 3+ hours to spend in a store on a Thursday, but I don't.
Also, I'm REALLY glad Apple can release a press statement about how many iPhones were sold, but not tell their customers ANYTHING about the white iPhone. I remember Steve Jobs saying something along the lines that he went to work everyday because of the customers..? Yeah, well Stevie, THIS is exactly how you prove that
You must go to the wrong AT&T stores. Probably an indirect who doesn't even sell iPhones.
What do you think: Will the new delivery date of July 2nd (UK) will be the real shipment date or could be that they will delay this even further?
I'm from Switzerland and I fear that our launch date will move from July to August (like it did for the iPad). Don't know if I should order a simlock free from the UK...
I'm from Switzerland and I fear that our launch date will move from July to August (like it did for the iPad). Don't know if I should order a simlock free from the UK...
It means that Apple's use of the expression "pre-order" does not have its customary meaning. Rather, as Apple uses it, "pre-order" is an expressions that means something like "get money and/or commitments from as many people as possible, whether or not we can actually deliver a product to them, so that investor's are pleased". Sort of like how I see flying pigs everyday!
Fine Print: My use of the term 'flying pigs' means the same as the ordinary English term 'birds'.
For me it's the coverage. I have it (verizon) at my house and on the drive to work, and at work (everywhere I drive). ATT is missing from my house and has holes on the drive. They are fine at work now. That's my case, I have to stick to an ipod and a flip phone for now.
AT&T had their biggest online sales day yesterday. The numbers would have been high even if it hadn't been an international pre-order.
Yes. You can almost always make a phone call. Calls seldom drop. Their customer reps bend over backwards to please you. They replace phones, no questions asked, with profuse apologies, when Asurion ships you a bad insurance replacement.
Unfortunately, they don't have the iPhone.
My B.S. detector just went off. How could Apple not anticipate that given 1) 10 country launch and 2) In the US almost all 3G and a good % of 3GS owners were eligible w/ regular upgrade pricing.
Did you hit it 40 times for fun? Or because they (don't know which one) couldn't handle the 600,000 total (6 or more countries, not just ATT) orders. They were swamped because they couldn't handle the original load (thus people hit the button 40 times for 10 hours) ... not that they had such a heavy load they were swamped.
An excellent theory, I think a quite likely explanation.
This is exactly the problem we had when I was working at a large console-game maker bringing up the beta of a much-anticipated game with online play.
We had database locking issues due to poorly-tested software. It wasn't that the load was that great (though we did underestimate the initial onslaught) but faulty coding. The result was cascades of locks, with nothing able to proceed. The problem was solved by triaging and shutting off unnecessary services. (So, for example, top scores couldn't be viewed.) The system was down for a few hours after the midnight rollout, and was at least limping by morning.
Load-testing had been done, but didn't catch the problem. Coverage was incomplete, and the load test was better behaved than juvenile users.
It was embarrassing, but not a disaster. The actual roll-out a month later went smoothly. ATT, unfortunately, didn't have the advantage of a beta.
I agree 100%. Bad software.
I posted this in another thread:
This is all supposition looking in from the outside, but:
As a software engineer and architect involved for many years in high transaction rate real time systems... the issue would really lay in the performance and scalability of the software.
My guess is the software is not performing well and putting undue load on the systems, resource and traffic wise, during order processing and data queries.
In addition if it were properly designed to be easily scalable, servers could be brought up as needed to handle additional load.
Based on the iPad security issue (poor/sloppy ATT design) and this, I would say these were not seasoned in house developers and that ATT is employing cheap labor in the design and implementation of critical systems without proper oversight and risk assessment.
Simple answer: Stop hiring cheap labor where it counts.