I think if AT&T were smart they would have made a pre-auth sales app for the iPhone that validated our contract info and setup an order for immediate purchase on pre order day. It could have came out hours after Steve Job's announcement with all the available phone type options for the user to preselect too. All the user would have to do on pre order day is click one fat button for "I agree to this preorder based on my pre qualification status and configuration". I should pitch this to AT&T. It could work for other things they sell too. It would certainly spread the load over a few days before the pre order begins and help their servers avoid being overwhelmed all at once. Instead of their servers pitching all the crap that goes along with an order (graphic requests for layout, cart setup, database inquiry for account upgrade status..yadda yadda) the app would already have the GUI local to the user and they'd be essentially submitting their encrypted consent for the pre-order. The user setup all the validation and selected what they wanted days before the pre order when the AT&T servers were not pegged all to hell, so the load to the systems is not all happening by a million people all at once. Then the user gets an email confirming the upgrade order. DONE
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How the AT&T pre-order process could have been better
- Thread starter bencjedi
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Apple should have saved whether you were approved and for what price tier so you didn't have to go through it every time. Would have saved a heck of a lot of load on AT&T's servers as well.
Apple does save your eligibility, but not until you have added to cart, which puts you through a second spinning beach ball (i.e. potential to fail).
Apple does save your eligibility, but not until you have added to cart, which puts you through a second spinning beach ball (i.e. potential to fail).
I think that's right grammatically. Not 100% sure but I think it has to do with being conditional.
It's not that simple.
Obviously the demand far exceeded even their high expectations. Even if they had anticipated it, would anyone in their right mind add that much additional server capacity to satisfy a spike in demand?
If you saw your servers being overwhelmed, what would you do? It's not like they can order up a couple dozen servers and implement them right away.
Apple needs to find a better way to get information from ATT. Perhaps a copy of their customer contract data. IMO, they certainly need to eliminate the interactive connection. Even when Apple fixed their problems, they were still saddled with the ATT servers being down. I'd bet Apple talks to the same servers the ATT stores do and that's why the stores were down.
What they need to do is spread the demand out. Perhaps existing customer pre-orders only for a day or two, then new orders a different day.
Its never that simple. I always got a laugh at managers that just state throw more resources at it. Its not like you can have a baby in one month with 9 woman.
I think what complicated the matter further for AT&T is the security changes they applied to close off those loop holes that exposed the personal data of iPad users. From what I've read that had an impact on the whole fiasco. I'm not sure if it was untested code, or not scalable or what but it played a part in the mess.