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I'd say it was to give the servers a chance. Don't forget the didn't just upgrade the iPod Touch to 2.1 but also upgraded iTunes which a LOT of people will have been downloading. Probably don't want all the iPhone users trying to download a 250mb update as well!!
 
If anyone thinks these files are sitting on some room of shiny Xserves in Cupertino, think again. As already mentioned in this thread, it's all hosted with Akamai, distributed across hundreds of plain old rack servers, probably running Linux.
 
I think the reason they are holding off a few days on the iphone update is to give the iPod touch a little love. Its kinda taken a back seat to the iPhone the whole time. I mean ever cool new update was done on the iphone then steve simply said... " oh yeah the ipod touch is going to get it too, but you ahve to pay for it" Apples just giving the iPod touch owners somthing first.
 
The most likely scenario is that the iPhone team missed their deadline to submit a release candidate by two days.

A Gold Master has to go to the phone networks for testing seven days before distribution to the public - not so with the Touch firmware, so that could go out on time.

Phazer
 
I think I may have worked it out. We aren't getting 2.1 later. We're getting 2.1.1. The iPod touch owners have had 2.1 early for debugging purposes. Apple know how important 2.1 is to iPhone users, and so they want to iron out any bugs they find. (And judging by the iPod touch forums on apple.com, there's still plenty of bugs in there!)

Remember that Apple also removed several bits of functionality surrounding Push in the 2.1 betas, so these functions weren't tested fully out in the field. 2.1 could be the biggest beta programme in the world ever!

Cue 2.1.1 becoming available later for both iPhone and iPod touch.

Of course, it's just speculation. :p
 
I think I may have worked it out. We aren't getting 2.1 later. We're getting 2.1.1. The iPod touch owners have had 2.1 early for debugging purposes. Apple know how important 2.1 is to iPhone users, and so they want to iron out any bugs they find. (And judging by the iPod touch forums on apple.com, there's still plenty of bugs in there!)

Remember that Apple also removed several bits of functionality surrounding Push in the 2.1 betas, so these functions weren't tested fully out in the field. 2.1 could be the biggest beta programme in the world ever!

Cue 2.1.1 becoming available later for both iPhone and iPod touch.

Of course, it's just speculation. :p

This speculation is wrong just on the basis of:

A Gold Master has to go to the phone networks for testing seven days before distribution to the public - not so with the Touch firmware, so that could go out on time.
 
It's probably because simultaneous launch of 3G + 2.0 + MobileMe = fingers badly burned, so there's probably been some sort of edict from on high that they don't launch more than 2 major products on the same day any more in case they need to field support calls due to issues.
 
It's probably because simultaneous launch of 3G + 2.0 + MobileMe = fingers badly burned, so there's probably been some sort of edict from on high that they don't launch more than 2 major products on the same day any more in case they need to field support calls due to issues.

It wasn't so much the surge of all three at the same time.

3G and 2G iPhones had to be activated with the update. That was the server that was killed on the iPhone end.

MobileMe apparently had more load than expected, causing it to come crashing down.

Are they connected by the fact that with one event happening and servers crashing that when the next problem occurred they couldn't handle it as fast? Of course. But there's not as much of a direct connection as you might think.
 
They probably waited until Friday because, in case things go wrong with some phones, the problems can be solved during the weekend.

The impact on people who work with their phones (over the week) would be far more evident if they need their phones operating on monday and they spend two working days trying to sort things out.
 
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