So, this morning I was reading over the reviews of all the cool new apps you can get for the iPhone once you’ve upgraded to the latest version of the software. This got me all excited.
“Finally,” I thought to myself. “The functionality I’ve always wanted from this beautiful piece of technology!”
It helped to ease the sting of being another screwed-over early adopter, having purchased my iPhone back in December. The Apple Store guy actually had the audacity to tell me a 3G iPhone wouldn’t be coming out any time in the next 6 months. I guess technically he didn’t lie to me. It was seven.
So, anyway, I decided I would wipe my iPhone entirely and start over because the iPod part of the device had been behaving strangely lately, e.g., deciding randomly not to play songs. So, I click restore, and walk away. When I come back, the wipe has errored out.
“That’s strange,” I thought. So, I tried again. Then I ran a repair on iTunes. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes. I checked the Apple.com home page. No indication that they’re having any problems there. What the fuck is going on here? My iPhone is now wiped and ready to be restored but I can’t seem to get a connection to the iTunes store. Or, more specifically, the part of the iTunes store that handles iPhone activations.
So, I head over to the Apple support forums, and whadya know, the top thread is about a hundred posts in with people who can’t get their iPhones, new and old alike, activated.
Shit.
Look, as a consumer of MMOs in the past, I know that product launches can be shaky or even downright disastrous. Some companies totally miss the mark on how the volume of a million people trying to do the same thing all at once will impact their servers. I’ve often wondered how you could get so upset when the company who’s providing the service drops the ball.
Thing is, those are just games. Sure, you’re paying a monthly fee, and you expect to have access to that product when you want because you’re paying for it. But again, they’re just games.
My iPhone is my primary method of contact for all things, business and personal. I have no other phone. I have email and twitter, but I primarily access those, you guessed it, from my phone. So, unless I want to drag my laptop around with me, I have no means of contacting anyone until Apple fixes this.
This is extraordinarily frustrating, and the situation is only exacerbated by the fact that I need to leave town in about two hours to head to podunk Iowa. So, I have to drag my laptop along with me and hope the hotel I’m staying in has Internet service so I can MAYBE get my phone activated again at some point tonight.
My point is, Apple really dropped the ball on this one. They saw how this impacted their servers when the first iPhone was released, so they had every means and all the time in the world to prepare, and they STILL couldn’t get their shit together.
Unacceptable, Apple. I expect better from you.
PUR3 DRIV3L 