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Cellphones Iphone Apple

iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Wreaking Havoc On Apple Store 285

theappwhisperer was one of a surprisingly large number of people writing in this morning to report that the Apple store is having serious troubles taking pre-orders of the new iPhone 4. People are seeing the error page or just waiting an insanely long time to get pages back. Just imagine trying to do this from an iPhone in a major market!
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iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Wreaking Havoc On Apple Store

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  • by TheKidWho ( 705796 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @07:55AM (#32576764)

    In other related news, there is now an Apple Store App in the Apple App Store.

    Yo dawg.

    • by numbski ( 515011 )

      Sadly, there is no app for that app (infinite recursion loop - null pointer exception, segmentation fault, core dumped)

    • I see what you saw I was seeing you do there.
    • Aha! This allows us to prove that, if the App Store contains a finite number of apps, it cannot be true that "there's an app for that" for all values of "that".

      After all, the Store cannot sell the app that sells the app that sells the app that sells the app that sells the app that sells the app that sells the app...

      Now if only we could work Cantor's diagonal slash [wikipedia.org] into this, so we could handle the case of an infinite app store...

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @07:57AM (#32576790)

    If everyone can just turn off your web browsers. I've got all day.

  • by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @07:58AM (#32576800) Journal

    Everyone knows this "delay" is a feature not a negative. It was designed in the best interest of consumers, to give them extra time to think, "Do I really want to spend a couple hundred dollars, or should I pay my rent?" It's like a waiting period.

    (I'm just joking of course - though I better say it, else someone might mark me "troll" - it's funny.)

  • Latest hypometer reports say you have dropped to hypecon 3 since someone managed to place a pre-order. I think you need to throttle more bandwidth.
  • by mdwh2 ( 535323 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @08:09AM (#32576938) Journal

    Reports are coming in of Slashdot being flooded with iPhone 4 stories, wreaking havoc with the front page, with people having to skip over an insane number of Apple stories to read something else. Just imagine trying to read this from an iPhone! The demand for the stories surpasses even that of three months of iPad stories, that were necessary before it finally shipped, and makes the traditional "daily iPhone story" seem infrequent in comparison.

  • by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @08:12AM (#32576970)

    Evo looks sweet to me, and it's getting some good reviews.

    Lots of people seem to be fed up with Jobs "walled garden" - crappy iTunes has to be used for everything, no SD card or USB ports, no flash.

    AT&T network is getting slammed all over the place - slow, unreliable, and insecure.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Lots of people seem to be fed up with Jobs "walled garden"

      Lots of people on Slashdot, but that is just a fraction of the population.

    • AT&T network is getting slammed all over the place - slow, unreliable, and insecure.

      Technically, it's AT&T's website that's insecure, not their network.

      • AT&T network is getting slammed all over the place - slow, unreliable, and insecure.

        Technically, it's AT&T's website that's insecure, not their network.

        He didn't specify CELLULAR network.

    • Evo looks sweet to me

      The phone is great, the strings strangle you. Take a closer look. You have no choices. It is locked to Sprint, unlike most phones, you can not just get an "unlock code" to use it with another carrier, the phone has to be reflashed and Sprint will not do that. You cant activate it on a carrier that provides much more reasonable and even pay-as-you-go pricing. Virgin Mobile and Boost (both companies used Sprints CDMA infrastructure and have been purchased by Sprint) refuse to activate an

  • Maintenance In Progress

    AT&T is continually working to improve our internet site for our customers. As part of this ongoing effort, we are currently doing maintenance. We apologize for this inconvenience and ask that you please try back again later.

    Apple isn't the only one... With these two companies relying on each others servers, it's no wonder that both are having issues.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by joshtimmons ( 241649 )

      I got the same message on the AT&T site after the keynote when people were checking to see if they qualified for the upgrade. Somebody should tell them that message makes them look incompetent; I mean, it's one thing to have a server go down under extremely heavy load. But it would be far stupider to choose such a peak time for scheduled maintenance. Just say "Sor

    • by PatHMV ( 701344 ) <post@patrickmartin.com> on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @08:55AM (#32577566) Homepage
      I think AT&T is the main problem, not Apple. But what ticks me off is this happened LAST TIME, when they rolled out the 3G. Do their network people not plan ahead for such things? What's IS Apple's fault, though, is the fact that I have to keep re-entering my cell phone account information (cell #, billing zip, and last 4 of SSN) EVERY SINGLE TIME. The Apple page ought to be smart enough to queue that information and let the computers keep trying AT&T, then getting back to me once it finally has the information from the AT&T servers it needs for me to tell it what plan I want to select, etc. Seriously, it would have been nice if you could have pre-applied for the pre-application, so that they could have selected a much smaller database which could handle the load, and Apple could have already had on their servers the data they need about my account to process my freaking order.
  • by Pecisk ( 688001 )

    And yet another time company has product understocked and has troubles to keep their online shop up, news at 11.

    Apple, this way of creating hype is getting way old.

    • Apple, this way of creating hype is getting way old.

      Do you really think that Apple is intentionally crippling their store on purpose? What do they stand to gain by making ordering their product more difficult?

      Have you considered that, just maybe, there's actually a large number of people who want one? The people I know with iPhones are a fanatical bunch, and I know an awful lot of people who wish that they too had one.

    • Maybe they just believed the people on Slashdot who said that nobody would want one.

  • No No NO! (Score:4, Funny)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @08:25AM (#32577140)
    <jobs_voice="on">
    No No NO! I said to host a web site for the iPhone4; not on an iPhone4!
    </jobs_voice="off">

    Question: What would Steve Jobs call a web site where you can negotiate the best price for an iPhone4?
    Answer: iDeal! ;^)
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by nacturation ( 646836 ) *

      <jobs_voice="on">

      No No NO! I said to host a web site for the iPhone4; not on an iPhone4!

      </jobs_voice="off">

      XML tutorials: there's an app for that.

  • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @08:27AM (#32577170) Journal
    Steve, the turtlenecked one: "Web minion! The weak fools we call 'customers' will endure any delay for our superior products, and the media interprets server slowness as a sign of overwhelming demand. Make it so!"

    Web minion: *starts iTunes on the Xserve handling orders, the beachball starts spinning*

    Steve, the turtlenecked one: "No, you fool! I don't want a slight increase in ping times, I want interminable delays, I want pages that have to be refreshed a dozen times, I want those pitiful insects to beg for our order confirmation screen. Take any measures necessary."

    Web minion: "Master, surely you don't mean?"

    Steve, the turtlenecked one: "Yes. Load a Flash Applet ..."
  • People are seeing the error page or just waiting an insanely great long time to get pages back. Just imagine trying to do this from an iPhone in a major market!

    Yeah, seeing error messages or getting pages back at all is a lot better than what usually happens when you try to use an iPhone in Manhattan.

  • I've been trying to pre-order for the last two hours. Flashback to three years ago with the original iPhone activation debacle. I'm dismayed that Apple and AT&T haven't gotten their collective shit together in all this time. :-(

    -Peter

  • by saterdaies ( 842986 ) on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @08:43AM (#32577418)

    Just imagine trying to do this from an iPhone in a major market!

    I know that it's fashionable to make fun of AT&T. I don't like carrier-exclusive agreements either - I think that they're anti-consumer and shouldn't be allowed. However, AT&T's network is actually the best in most markets as shown in independent tests by Gizmodo, PC World, and PC Magazine.

    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364263,00.asp [pcmag.com]
    http://www.pcworld.com/article/189592/atandt_roars_back_in_pcworlds_second_3g_wireless_performance_test.html [pcworld.com]
    http://gizmodo.com/5428343/our-2009-12+city-3g-data-mega-test-att-won [gizmodo.com]

    The most recent test (PC Magazine) shows AT&T nearly 80% faster than the other 3G networks (June 2010). PC World's tests show AT&T to be 67% faster than the competition (Feb 2010). Gizmodo's tests show AT&T on top, but by a smaller margin (Dec 2009). PC World's tests do show that AT&T has improved markedly since their Feb 2009 tests (improving speeds by over 200% in some places). By the end of 2009, AT&T's network was the fastest and it's kept improving to widen the gap. Even in so-called trouble markets like New York and San Francisco AT&T is doing well. In San Francisco, their speeds are double the competition's average and over 75% faster than the second fastest. In New York, T-Mobile's HSPA+ network (recently rolled out) is 10% faster, but AT&T is still 94% faster than Verizon and 130% faster than Sprint.

    It's fashionable to make fun of AT&T. If you live in a rural area, AT&T might not have 3G service to you. If you were using AT&T in 2007 and 2008, their service was likely slower than the competition. That is not the case anymore. Real data (rather than anecdotal evidence) shows AT&T to be quite ahead of the competition when it comes to 3G capacity in major markets.

    • Now I know what all those people feel like who scream "SHILL!!!" at Microsoft posts (still way too many of you, by the way).
      Or (looking at your last two posts here) is it actually possible to be a carrier fan[boy]? Or do you just work at AT&T and love your employer? Maybe I'm wrong. I'm genuinely curious.

      • I'm actually a Sprint customer (I refuse to pay AT&T's prices and have a really awesome deal with Sprint and am really happy with the service and don't understand why more people don't use them). However, I appreciate objective evidence rather than partisan anecdotes. Most people only have service from a single carrier and any experience they have with another carrier is years old. So, a Verizon customer who says AT&T is unreliable either has no evidence (they never were an AT&T customer) or

        • Well, I am questioning, but there's no reason to apologize, since the questioning itself is pretty much an attack on you however you look at it. The reason your post was suspicious to me was that it was kind of tangential to the discussion at hand and the fact that nobody here ever seems to defend any mobile carrier (let alone AT&T). I'm young enough that I still let my parents buy me whatever phone and mobile plan they see fit, so I don't really care one way or another. I was just surprised to actually

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by saterdaies ( 842986 )

            According to PC World, AT&T's 3G service improved in Boston by 184% (nearly doubling) between Feb 2009 and Feb 2010.

            Public perception is one of those things that doesn't change quickly (no matter what the evidence). I know that a lot of people had billing issues after the Sprint-Nextel merger and that's been resolved and Sprint's service is as strong as I've seen it, but customers still have a bad impression of Sprint.

            With wireless service, it's hard to really get good data. Verizon is trying to get p

    • I've lived in Seattle - delayed text messages, dropped calls and the second you get outside the big city - zero service while my friends on Sprint and Verizon have service.

      Most used service on any smart phone is making phone calls - when you can't even do that its a big problem.

      So yeah AT&T has invested jack into their infrastructure while pretty much every single Verizon tower supports EVO now.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 )

      Oh, its great when you have a solid 3G signal, but even in downtown Chicago that can be a problem. Toss in all the dropped calls and its really not as great as those links suggest. Essentially, those tests, if memory serves, are just data speed tests. I don't think they were done in random spots, but where 3G worked and where they had a solid signal.

      I'm in a similar boat now with Sprint's 4G service. Spotty reception, but crazy speeds. I just rooted my EVO, enabled wireless tethering, and with one bar of

  • All those people saw slashdot yesterday and want to not read Ulysses.

  • This is obviously all AT&T's fault. Will they ever get anything right? Poor Apple!
  • I would stand in line NOT to buy the iphone 4.
  • so I am not surprised. :) Also nice to blame the customers for the problem. Just like the blamed the reporters for the iPhone presentation not working. Blame AT&T for shitty deals. Blame Canada, for something. Blame everyone but themselves. I think I would be asking if they knew there would be demand, then why did they not do something about it. If they didn't, then why not.

    Anyway I just bought an iPhone 3GS so I won't be getting a new one anytime soon. Considering I live in Canada it likely won't even

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