The hits keep on comin' - Andy Reitz (blog)

As per yesterday's post, the first thing that I did this morning after waking up was to check to see if the iPhone 2.0 update was ready for download. After hitting the "check for updates" button twice, I found that it was! So I chose to download the update, thinking that it might not finish before I had to leave for work. Thankfully, it did finish, so with about 10 minutes to go before I absolutely had to leave the house for the train, I started the install.

The install proceeded fairly quickly, and after a couple minutes my iPhone was updated. After you install any sort of software update on the iPhone (or restore the factory settings), iTunes must contact Apple's servers (which in turn probably connect to AT&T's servers) in order to activate the iPhone. Activation is the process by which the iPhone is registered with the network, so that you can do all of the normal things you would with a cell phone.

And this is where the roadblock occurred. iTunes spent a long time trying to activate, and eventually bombed out with an error. I tried to activate several times (missing my train and opting for the one that comes 5 minutes later). I stayed even longer than I should have, and had to drive to the station in order to make the later train. But still, by the time that I left, I wasn't able to activate.

So, I was phoneless (and more importantly iPod-less!) until I got to work. At work, things weren't much better. But while performing my workly duties, I kept trying, and finally at about 11:00 AM Pacific, my phone activated!

Unfortunately, my I don't keep my iTunes at work in sync with my one at home. So, my work iTunes knew none of my contacts, music, video, calendar entries, or e-mail settings. And thus, these things couldn't be synced to my iPhone. Thus, while my phone was now able to make and receive calls, I didn't have anybodies phone number. And even worse, I didn't have any music to listen to during the day.

I managed to grab some emergency Tool bootlegs off of my server, and get my mail configured, which has been enough to get me through the day. And I'm sure that once I get home, and plug my iPhone into it's "master" iTunes, that all will be well. But still, this was a fairly annoying day.

And I'm not alone, the web was filled with reports of problems today:

So, it was pretty-much a bad day all around. The real crime here is that it didn't have to go down this way. If Apple had spread out the demand for iPhone activations, it would have been easier for them to keep their servers up. They could have done this by letting the owners of the previous generation iPhone update their phones on Wednesday or Thursday. In addition, they could have better spread out the launch - leaving a day in between the launch for Europe and North America, for example.

I wonder if anyone at Apple will address today's issues publically? Or if we'll see modified behavior from Apple at the next major iPhone launch?

-Andy.