I was full of glee to have iTunes tell me the new amazing software was ready, Download went fine and the firmware installation was smooth enough, but then came the horror. Upon iTunes trying to do anything with the phone it comes up saying 'iTunes store connection timed out, we are unable to process your request'. All the poor little iPhone can do is sit there telling me to connect it to iTunes...oh and make emergency calls. Do you think 'Apple Support' are available on 999?

After 15 minutes sat there clicking back to the screen, managed to get through - then took about 30 mins to go through the install process and reload all the stuff onto my phone. The 'Jesus' in Jesus phone certainly being used in the pejorative sense today!!!

I wonder what flavour of crack they are smoking..48 hours indeed!!! Are they going to refund me for 48 hours worth of lost service?? Not bloody likely!!

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is juggling Zunes in glee.

Nokia's Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is balancing N96s on his nose while clapping his hands.

HTC's Cher Wang is throwing celebratory Diamond Touches out of her office window.

Could Apple and O2 have fucked up the introduction of the iPhone 3G to the British any more than they already have?

If Steve Jobs and Cesar Alierta haven't demanded heads on plates and new orofices for some of the worst product release planning and management known, then it's only a matter of time. This is fucking embarrassing.

Also, why is it that three tech chieftains all have references to men's bits as names? BALLmer, Olli-PEKKA, and WANG.

I've not been able to get the iPod Touch firmware down all day even though I managed to buy some apps and be charged for them.

Firstly the update wasn't available anywhere, then they updated their website with a link around lunch but returned 'itunes store currently unavailable' until late this afternoon when the sync section in itunes updated me to say it was available but that also returned the same messages. After a while I simply got timeout's waiting for response, followed by itunes telling me the software was now upto date seemingly forgetting that it just knew about the 2.0 software update.

I want my software damn it, I've already paid for the apps.

I have a shiny iPhone which was delivered to me while I was at work. Just got home and plugged it in and at the moment it is sitting around sulking like its owner ... I understand it is a massive worldwide launch but maybe they could have sacrificed a little bit of their control over what sim you put in the handset in exchange for the people who have purchased them actually being able to use the thing? Surely if they knew how many phones they had made they could therefore calculate what system resources would be required to register and activate all of them? Whoever did the calculations to estimate how many people would try and do it at the same time really messed up ...

It took me about two hours to get my phone back on.

I'm a big Apple/Mac booster and even "I" agree. Do NOT update your phone for a day or two.

On the bright side this means they are getting a LOT more sales than they imagined. they must be getting hit by an activationwave that makes the first one look tiny by comparison.

installed it on Thursday when macrumours published the link to the firmware file, thus avoiding all this palaver

Saint Jobs, because he wouldn't ever let down his baying mob of fans

Wait till next week. Simple.

also, if you want to jailbreak your iphone or ipod touch you'll have to wait a bit.

personally I'm not upgrading itunes nor my touch for as long as I possibly can. ITunes sucks enough and don't see any reason to pay even more money to apply just so I can download the odd application.

How the hell can they get away with such a shambolic product launch?

The press (including el Reg) should be tearing strips off them.

Not only does iTunes barf when trying to access the v2.0 OS for iPod touch, half the time it also tells you that v1.1.4 is the latest version anyway!

On top of that, www.mac.com and www.me.com have been up and down like a whore's pants all day.

I have just been on the phone to CPW and they can not find my order placed yesterday at 8pm for delivery on Sat!

Comes with the territory - Don't you guys know that by now? ;)

It was a fair bet that Jesus phone was going to cause chaos somewhere during launch. I'm gonna wait a few weeks until service/supply/bugs have been sorted - and I've ditched my current provider...

For those of you who sneaked in early - Congrats! :D

@AC CPW order...

Placed your order Thursday? that's nowt!, placed mine on Monday and they've still lost it...and I held off the upgrade for a couple of months waiting for it!

I only grew concerned because I got not one but two calls from their sales this morning from them asking if I wanted to upgrade to it...could have been waiting in tomorrow, little suspecting..

Bllleeeerrrrrghhhhhhh!

Paris because...well because, really

Just been to Bluewater in Kent and was told by an o2 staff member that everything was fine and they could sell me a 3G iPhone no problems..... what makes this worse is that the spotty yoof that said this to me didn't even know what I meant when I said 'aren't your servers down?'

'eh?' was basically the reply I got......

Paris just because....

Tell us now (and again and again, because this IS an all too FREQUENT tale) about how wonderful and pure and perfect and Apple never makes mistakes, is now!! You know AppleTards, Apple itself is it own worst enemy in its iPhony reputation of superiority; except all the media whores never report the FACTS.

But the BEST part is that all you AppleTards get what you deserve when the self inflicted Apple POS "Virus" bites you right in your own self-righteous arrogant asses.

Apple is like Barack Hussein Obama - Hope, Change and a lot of other iPhony BullShit. Are YOU learning to speak Spanish because you should be embarrassed, lefties? Naw, you should be learning Simplified Chinese because that's where all your Apple labeled crap comes from.

All my mobile phones in the past have been so boring. Now I have my 3G iBrick I can spend hours on the computer clicking on buttons playing the thrilling game, "try to make your phone work".

And if I get suicidal I can make an emergency call on on my iBrick. Fantastic.

The GPS is excellent too - although I can't use it I know I haven't moved from my desk in over three hours. Cool!

I hope the next version of iTunes has a counter so you can see how many times you've failed to activate your iBrick - that way you can have even more fun trying to beat your past scores of" attempts per minute".

Oh and as for all the "bleading edge" comments - this is not a new product - its a slightly updated version of an existing product.

Think you can use that new iPhone sport? Think Different!

Upgraded to version 2 firmware this morning, took 15 minutes, now my iPhone buzzes every couple of minutes as mail hits my Exchange account.

Take /that/, Blackberry users :-)

...as I'm just going abroad for three weeks with my iPhone being my sole feed of news, internet, email and phone calls.

Oh, and I've stuffed it full of novels to read on a jailbreak reader app - somehow I'm suspecting the 2.0 firmware will break all my nice third party bits and pieces.

@pctechxp: Probably because every failed transaction is a sale lost. When your direct income is on the line, I would imagine you'd pour a whole load of money into server resources - A serious load.

@webster phreaky: Get a life you noob - I mean, seriously.

I'm not a fanboy but like my iphone (1G). So i thought wow when I get in from work I'll update the firmware. My iphone is sitting there patiently for the 1.1.4 to get it back working after the 2.0 failed. Come on apple usually your launches of new software/hardware are fine. This reaks of memories of Steam and dare I say it Windows Vista.

I'm no Apple fanboi, but I'm tempted to go buy the full spectrum of Apple products now and ditch my PCs. The reason? If Webster Phreaky uses a PC, they can't be any good. Webster, you are a Phool. Perhaps for your 15th birthday your right to an opinion can be reinstated; for now it should be suspended. The rest of your flame-inciting comments aren't worth a rebuttal. Peace.

I recieved all the same errors everyone else did with this Stupid Iphone Update thing. It told me it couldn't reach the store and then It Restored my Iphone. Funny, but when It finished restoring my Iphone I got the Updated Calculator, Apps Store, Contact List ... ETC.

I'm a little confused... it said it didn't work... but it worked...

Is anyone else getting the same issue?

MIKE

We all have seen how windowsupdate fails once a month, haven't we? Hmm? No?

Seems I did a good thing getting the Diamond instead. But I did this because I have once had the "pleasure" of needing to communicate with what apple CALLS a "service-department". I didn't get any service. In fact I got what could only be called inverted service. So horrible was their attitude that I promised myself never to get any apple product again, and to warn everybody who would listen to me about this company. This was when I discovered that Apple isn't a brand mark, but the icon of a dangerous cult, and they believe anybody who doesn't blindly praise St. Jobs like a S.P. (Think Scientology)

Apple as a company MAY be ok, but their cultists should be locked up until they start taking their medicines.

//Svein

Oh well , this puts credence to the sayings since the halcyon days when Apple 2 ruled the waves until it was torpedoed by the Boca Raton mob with it's very much cheaper multiple Chinese built clones that changed the landscape to that which we know today , along with the fact the very much larger open source mob do not have the same problem as the control freaks with every finger and toes in the pie mob at Cupertino central !

"A Cupertino fan is easily fleeced of their money in buckets !"

As Nelson would say " Ha ! Ha! "

Consider youself lucky you've even got something to brick. Ordered my iPhone from CPW yesterday lunchtime, got receipt and confirmation. Found out today that they accidentally sent it to the local branch, despite all the receipts and confirmations saying it was being delivered to my house. Went to the store, and they can't find it. Not only that, but I can't cancel my order because the department that does that sort of thing is closed, which means I can't walk down the road to O2 and buy one there. It's an absolute shambles, and the CPW customer service is easily the worse I've ever dealt with. So far, I've spent 30 minutes on the phone with the courier, 45 minutes on hold with CPW, and hour + in the store and I still don't have the damn phone. What's more, the store is out of stock, CPW online is out of stock, so there's no prospect of even getting one for 2 weeks.

The software downloaded like it should have, but wouldn't finish instialling like this posting stated, it simply said that the network couldn't be reached, check your internet connection. I was a little disapointed in apple at this one. I checked my connection... Fine... I contacted the apple store through Itunes.. Fine.

You would think that apple would have seen this comming. Maybe Next time.

Check out my Articles at http://www.weathat.com

Michael

Well, my iPhone still works just as well as it did yesterday, or last week come to that. In other words, exceedingly well.

Sure, I'm curious to try out the new app store, and I'll probably buy a new 3G iPhone at some point in the next week or two (if only to keep my mum quiet, who's been pestering me non-stop that she wants my old phone), but I definitely don't mind waiting a few days until the fuss dies down!

I got my shiny new 3G iPhone this morning and I managed to d/l the latest iTunes and activate it without any problem on my MacBook Pro.

Everyone I've shown it to has been coming out with comments like "wow", "fantastic", "that's soooo cool" etc. Suck on that webster phreaky (no doubt another Vista-using saddo who is fed up of Apple out-doing M$ at every turn recently).

Do you think 'Apple Support' are available on 999?

Apple have a support department?

Anyone know of a pub round here devoid of Apple/Windows/Linux fanbois and haterz?

This whole thing is getting just a leeeetle old...

Mine's the one with the pinch in the pocket...

> Also, why is it that three tech chieftains all have references

> to men's bits as names? BALLmer, Olli-PEKKA, and WANG.

Don't forget St. Steve hisself: what, after all, is a "Steve JOB"? Prolly something that gets done to one of those BALLs, PEKKAs, or WANGs...

It's all been a mess hasn't it?

Huge queues outside the London Old Broad Street O2 store, but no-one can activate; Horrible upgrade experience for existing iPhone users: when I tried to upgrade my phone to 2.0 last night, the upgrade failed with some obscure error number - not even a decent message - surely some shoddy coding there, Apple.

Then the upgrade servers went down. And came up again. And went down.

To get my phone back to life, I had to restore it through iTunes - so a 25 minute wait for the 1.1.4 software to be downloaded from Apple (why isn't it already on my iMac? Who knows), click to agree the 1.1.4 license, then the phone sat spinning for 1/2 hour, then... it came to back to life with 2.0 software. So why the 1.1.4 download? Go figure.

This morning (surely I need to get a life) I tried downloading the Remote App. The iPhone won't download it, saying I have to go back to iTunes to check for purchases. So I tried this and... the App Store isn't available. And still isn't available some 8 hours later.

Not Apple's finest moment.

Why on earth is everyone so het up about all of this? Chill out a bit. Okay, so it's not Apple's finest hour. But they'll fix it because they have to. So your phone is out of action for, what, a couple of days? Big deal. Go outside, get some fresh air, enjoy your temporary freedom from that pesky boss and that pesky wife. It's no catastrophe. It's a blip. The fact remains that 90-odd percent of Apple customers think that the company provides them with products they love at a price they're more than willing to pay and offers them good enough service that they keep going back and they recommend them to their friends - and this will do nothing to change that. Most companies would kill to be in that position - would Microsoft take a two day outage to make people love Vista? I think so...

Thumbs down for the fanbois, the fanboi-baiters and all the people who think that because Apple got something wrong it's probably the end of the world and it's at least time for a huge rant.

Other half got hers yesterday afternoon, activated via iTunes (had to try a couple of times though) and she's very, very, very happy.

One thing about the adverts if you've seen them.... "GPS mapping like you've never seen before" - Google maps with GPS has been on Windows Mobile devices for ages... and really isn't that good. It's the only thing so far that's disappointed her on the device to be honest.

So for whatever reason Apple cant update your phone AND THAT TAKES AWAY YOUR CALLING FACILITY - THIS IS SHOCKING AND SCARY!!!

A phone is a phone and should make calls first and foremost, that is how alot of my work communication happens, so that i can pay for iPhones and the like.

Mission Critical i would say yet a complete noob to the phone market comes along and does this yet people seem to think this is OK.

If you cant keep the basic phone work stick with making iTouches instead of iPhones.And in the least flame inviting way, it does kind of serve you all right for believing the hype and piling in on day one. I never install a new linux distro on day one.

Well, after downloading the firmware update on Friday, after work, I too experienced the iBrick effect. I tried everything disconnecting/reconnecting the phone, flushing the DNS, the lot. No joy. I was just left with the 999 call option.

As luck would have it, in a weird way, my young son woke me up for more milk at 3:30 am and so I decided to disconnect/reconnect again and yes, it worked. So I also did my wife's iPhone at the same time.

The only lasting effect is that it reset the timezone to Cupertino, on both handsets! Nice to see those mac boys do their testing so well...

And for all you Mac lovers, i have a 24" iMac and a Mac Book Air, both of which I have happily installed with Vista. Enjoy!!! :o)

So, I managed to actually upgrade my phone on Friday, but had to snatch it from the dock before it went through the restore stage - hey the pub is more important, right? So when I finally got home (several hours later, ahem) I plugged it into my trust Mac and managed after about 30 minutes to get it activated. Lovely. Installed lots of cute apps (the Facebook app is ace! And the AIM client is... dangerous), all worked perfectly. So of course, I get back to the office early this morning, and plug my phone into the dock here to give it a charge... and it promptly wipes the phone of all my apps, and everything else I'd done on it over the weekend. Stupid restore runs without asking!!! Talk about blood dumb software :( So off I go downloading and installing all those apps again. And I hope I didn't get any important SMS over the weekend...

The GPS *is* something new: all your photos are automatically geotagged, and the phone allows Apps to be aware of where the phone is and behave accordingly. There are already some apps that ping other phones nearby for social networky stuff. It's both scary and cool. Tried one App on sunday that looks for other iPhones close by and shares "moods" with them. I have no idea what new level of useless waste of time this is, but it has a unique Apple twist :P

"Why on earth is everyone so het up about all of this? Chill out a bit. Okay, so it's not Apple's finest hour. But they'll fix it because they have to. So your phone is out of action for, what, a couple of days? Big deal. Go outside, get some fresh air, enjoy your temporary freedom from that pesky boss and that pesky wife. It's no catastrophe. It's a blip."

For you, it might be just a blip. For many people, not being available on the phone when you're required to be can be cause for discipline - or it could even be a breach of contract that could result in you getting fired.

Heaven help you if you ever needed to dial the emergency services and were unable to because your phone was just "having a blip". What's the point in having a mobile phone if you can't rely on the service provision?

'As Nelson would say " Ha ! Ha! " '

A quick review of historical record in the light of this little fact gives such gems as:

"I see no ships! Ha! Ha!"

"England confides that every man shall do his duty"; "Excuse me sir, but 'confides' is not in the signal book and must be spelled. May I substitute 'expects'?"; "Ha! Ha!"

"Kiss me Ha-Ha-Hardy."