iPhone activated: It took AT&T only 39 hours
The good news is that my iPhone is finally activated and it's definitely worth the money.
The bad news is that it took AT&T 39 hours to get it done.
SF protester prepares sign before Apple iPhone launch: 'I'm not buying one? What am I, crazy?' No, you're smart to wait until the activation problems are fixed.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)I've documented the problems step-by-step, including the magic (and not-so-magic) numbers I called, in this post. Here's our review from my colleagues at CNET Reviews.
It's not just me. An unscientific poll shows half of the respondents who bought iPhones had activation problems, blogger Thomas Hawk has recounted his similar woes, and there's a Slashdot thread too. And check out Apple's own discussion forum.
Some of the posts that you, our esteemed readers, made to my step-by-step recounting of AT&T's comedy of errors are as depressing as my own experience. One Sprint-to-AT&T switcher said both phones on a family plan had to be activated in sequence before the first one would begin to work. Another one says they've been waiting 31 hours.
What remarkably poor planning on the part of whoever designed this activation system.
So who's responsible? Nobody outside AT&T and Apple seems to know for certain so far. But I wonder about the role of a New Jersey company called Synchronoss, which has a contract with AT&T to handle the activation.
As my colleague Tom Krazit says in this article on Sunday, we haven't been able to reach any of the executives at Synchronoss for comment over the weekend (and it's not for lack of trying).
Publicly-traded Synchronoss, oddly, hasn't been very public about its iPhone involvement. One of the few articles was one last week in Investor's Business Daily, which says: "Its software takes care of the process from the time the customer has made the decision to buy to when the transaction is processed and the account is activated on the network."
That sounds like a pretty key ingredient in the mix to me. Also, the e-mail updates that iPhone customers received said AT&T in the From: line but were actually, as the headers reveal, sent by Synchronoss.
Yahoo Finance discussion boards, and a few investor sites, have talked about buying shares of Synchronoss as a way to capitalize on the iPhone's expected success. I wonder if investors will be a little less optimistic now.
Update: We've heard back from Synchronoss. They're "extremely pleased" with the way activation went over the weekend.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
3 to 4 minutes each.
My brother got his going, new account, across the country in 5
minutes.
No issues here.
IPhone is the real deal.
the process was me syncing all my stuff on to it, and that's just
because USB is only so fast (as am I).. maybe they'll incorporate
firewire someday??
hours for my numbers from Sprint to port over, but then again, we
started this process at an AT&T store and they gave us a pre-
approval number. Wonder if that made all the difference?
from 250,000-500,000. Imagine how long it would have taken if
everyone had to go through the activitation in the stores when they
bought them. It would have been a lot longer overall.
Obviously, a lot of people are having problems, but I don't buy
Engadget's "poll" numbers. Too easy for the numbers to get
skewed by people who just want to make Apple look bad.
Found a great place to rant!
www.iphonerants.com
In what universe does that happen?
Welcome to any technology version 1.0.
I'll be ordering my iPhone around v2.0.
anyone that AT&T wants your money so bad that they're too cheap
to even do the work themselves. Maybe if they would curb some of
the marketing they wouldn't have the problem of not having
enough resources to handle the customers they already have.
AT&T be any different? My activation took under 3 min including
the time it took me to e ted in all the data. I am a current AT&T
customer and now more satisfied then ever. T-Mobile & Verizon
seemed to get the cool phones first - not anymore.
I sent this via my iPhone - took about 2.5 min - keyboard is
starting to not be so bad. I have huge thumbs and never found
a smartphone I could use before now!
My iPhone closed a deal for me this morning and paid for itself in
the process.
As it made me money, both it and ATT are just fine.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 2, 2007
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA ? The Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign today became the first campaign to launch an iPhone platform. This new platform will allow iPhone users to access the campaign?s Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking tools and online videos, directly from their iPhones.
?The iPhone is an exciting technology that will help us reach potential voters across the country,? states eCampaign director Justine Lam. ?The Ron Paul campaign continues to utilize new technologies to spread Dr. Paul?s message of freedom, peace and prosperity.?
Terra Eclipse of Santa Cruz, California designed this special platform for the Ron Paul campaign. ?Our web development team has built a robust tool that will allow iPhone-equipped volunteers to bring Ron Paul?s online popularity into offline households in key early primary states,? says Wyatt Hull, creative director of Terra Eclipse.
The Ron Paul 2008 iPhone platform is available at www.ronpaul2008.com/iphone .
Stanford University today (7/2). I pluged in my phone and it was
active in 10 minutes.
- Doh! A Windows machine made my newest Apple experience possible
- by jay lueckel July 3, 2007 11:16 AM PDT
- I?ve been a Mac user for most of my computing life, but who
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(21 Comments)would believe that a Windows XP machine would save the day
and enable me to activate my new iPhone.
Rather than wait in line on Friday, I had decided to wait a few
days for more phones to be shipped to the AT&T stores before
buying. However, on chance, I stopped by the local store around
8:30 pm that evening and they had plenty of phones available.
I wasn?t able to start the activation process until about 10 pm,
but immediately ran into problems tying to activate on my G4
iBook - I went online to make sure I had the latest version of
iTunes, only to find that I had version 7.2 and needed 7.3. I
proceeded to download only to find that I had OS X 10.3.9 and I
needed 10.4!
I had missed the fine print on the Mac requirements for the
proper version of OS X - 10.3.9 or later for iTunes, but 10.4 for
the 7.3 download. Was I ever steamed - how was I going to be
able to activate my new iPhone at 10:30 pm with no store open
to get the correct OS version. Anyway, after spending $500 plus
on the phone Jobs & Co. still wanted me to pony up another
$130 for OS X 10.4!
Fortunately my son had his Dell with Windows XP and the proper
service pack so that I could download the correct version of
iTunes and then activate the phone.
About 11:30 pm I got everything activated and synced and was
on and I will say the iPhone has exceeded my expectations.
Of course, I?ll have to wait for my copy of OS X before I can sync
and load up with photos and music from my Mac laptop - but as
a Mac guy, its strange to have to admit that a Dell and Windows
XP made my newest Apple experience possible.