Superman is faster then a speeding bullet, can leap tall buildings in a single bound and is the man of steel, but give him some kryptonite and he gets a little whiny and all the bad guys take over.
Today is the long awaited day that we finally get the iPhone 3G in hand, and currently it has been available for a total of 3 .5 hours on the east coast, and not even an hour on the west coast, and what has at&t done. They have killed the buzz. They have handed the iPhone a big block of kryptonite in the form of activation servers that can not handle the load… SHOCKING.
Remember this post [ Buy your iPhone3G online? Apple and at&t say no way! ]. In that post I reminisced back to last year when the at&t activation servers went down, because they couldn’t handle the load. I don’t want to say I told you so, especially since everyone told you so. No one should be surprised that at&t is too inept to have learned its lesson last year. No one should be shocked that iPhone sales will ONCE AGAIN be halted due to a carrier that can’t seem to pull its activation servers out of their corporates asses.
What we should be shocked by is that Steve Jobs allowed this to happen… again. Do you think that Superman would continue to partner up with Lex Luther after he had given him a big block of kryptonite? NO! So, Steve, what the hell are you doing?
You have created a worldwide race of lemmings willing to stand in line for days for a PHONE… that in itself is a masterpiece of marketing. You have proven that your company is the leader in creating fan boys. Yet, for some reason (money) you insist on forcing us to use a carrier that is so useless and so inept that it may single-handedly be the death of the iPhone.
The next big dissapointment for the lucky few that did get the 3G iPhone activated, will be the limited and frustratingly bad 3G network that at&t has, that will likely crumble under the weight of the new iPhone users.
With the success of the first generation of the iPhone and the imminent release of the version 2 3G iPhone, other cell phone makers, and providers are scrambling to create the copy that can defeat the original. Personally, the only one that I think even has a chance is the Instinct from Sprint.
I don’t really think that this phone is any more capable of defeating the original, but I think Sprint is properly motivated to try. Sprint has been suffering steep losses in the market, and has said that they will be spending 100 million dollars to promote and market this phone. That is three times the amount spent on any other phone marketing campaign in Sprint history.
Add to that, Sprint will be selling this phone for the low cost of $130, with a two year contract through Sprint. The $130 dollars includes a $100 rebate from Sprint, so your actual out of pocket expense is $230.
Aside from making this cheaper then the iPhone, Sprint will also be releasing this phone 21 days earlier then the iPhone. June 20th will mark the day you can get the instinct, whereas the iPhone buyers will have to wait until July 11.
Still, the question remains. Can the Instinct prove itself as the “iPhone Killer”? The answer is no, for three simple reasons.
1. Sprint is the #3 provider in the US, and they are known for having sketchy service in large portions of the US, so regardless of how good your phone is, if you can count on the service, there is no point. Sprint also has clear problems with their customer service, and in my own experience have seen many people suffer from straight out fraud from Sprint billing department.
2. Regardless of how much money Sprint spends on advertising this phone, they will not even come close to the marketing thrust, and media coverage, that Apple is getting.
3. In the end, people want the real thing. How many different mp3 players came after the iPod that were supposed to be better, cheaper and ultimately kill the iPod ? How many were successful ? None. The only market this will take from Apple are current Sprint customers who are still under contract, and want an iPhone experience without having to do early termination with Sprint. Anyone who has the ability to switch to at&t for the iPhone will be doing so.
Will there eventually be an “iPhone Killer”? Perhaps, and I think the only people that have the capability of killing the iPhone is at&t, since they are in fact the only negative to the iPhone.
In what is most likely an effort to stifle the purchasing and unlocking of iPhones for use on other networks, Apple and at&t have announced that you will not be able to buy your iPhone online, nor will you be able to buy the phone and activate it later. Purchase and activation will take place at the same time.
While I completely understand at&t’s desire to prevent the iPhone usage on other networks, since I am sure they paid a pretty penny for the exclusivity, I have to imagine that there is a better way to go about this. Forcing a 10 - 12 minute process onto people in the store is going to make the initial buying day (July 11) a complete mad house.
I remember back to the original launch day, and even though I wasn’t buying one I went with my brother to get his and the store was mad crazy. In that particular episode, he yelled (yes, yelled) at the guy behind the counter, over the top of all the apple fan boys, that he wanted an iPhone, and then half-handed half threw his credit card to the guy who ran it and came out with the phone and the receipt. The whole process took maybe 2 minutes, and it was still crazy in that store.
Now, factor in that NO ONE will be able to buy online, and the phone is now priced so that my 14 year-old nephew can afford one, and that the purchase time has gone from 2 minutes to 15- 20 minutes, and that is assuming that at&t’s activation servers don’t take a massive dump (remember the last time … they did. ).
So, how much pandamonium can we expect when the activation server go down, and the people who have been sitting in line for as long a week or so, can’t even buy the phone since at&t can’t activate it..
I will be there just to watch the show.
Today at&t announced a 20 percent increase to the typical download speeds across its 3G wireless network and a 50 percent increase to typical upload speeds.
The mobile operator and exclusive provider for Apple’s iPhone in the US said the upgrades are results of recent network enhancements, including the deployment of High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) technology across all existing 3G markets that is expected to be completed by the end of the month.
Customers on the network should now achieved download speeds between 700 Kbps (kilobits per second) and 1.7 Mbps (megabits per second), up from 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps. Meanwhile, upload speeds should jump to the 500 Kbps - 1.2 Mbps range, up from 500 to 800 Kbps.
The announcement comes just days before Apple is expected to take the wraps off its version 2 iPhone which will use this 3G network.
at&t says its 3G mobile network is available in more than 275 major U.S. metropolitan areas, adding that later this month it will become the first U.S. carrier to have fully deployed High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology across its entire 3G network.
By year-end, the company plans to offer 3G service in nearly 350 major metropolitan U.S. areas.
Just one day after [ instituting a policy ] of one [ iPhone ] sale per customer, [ AT&T ] said Thursday that it has discontinued the policy both on its Web site and in its retail stores.
Customers will now be able to buy three iPhones per person, a limit that the carrier enacted when the device first went on sale almost a year ago. Apparently AT&T has decided that they do in fact have enough inventory to leave the three phone per person limit in place.
“Our No. 1 concern is to make sure that every customer who wants an iPhone gets one,” an AT&T spokesman said. “We thought yesterday that the fairest way to do that was to limit customers to one iPhone. Then we realized that we have sufficient inventory to go back to our original policy.”
Apple iPhone’s have been running out all over in the US and UK, and apple.com is not selling them online at all anymore, stating that they are out of stock.
All of this smacks of the upcoming 3G release, and while all of this makes me hate AT&T even more then normal, I am happy to see the trail leading directly to 3G iPhones.
There is no current information on when AT&T will change it’s mind again, but we are sure it won’t take long.