I followed the instruction: keep it docked, turn it off, turn it on. I think my phone is almost restored. Very good advice to just go take a walk though! Fortunately, I’m in my happy place today.

I had hoped to have a new iPhone 3G today, but O2 decided otherwise - they’ve had the order since last Monday but are dragging their heels over clearing it. I’m a bit frustrated by that, but I’m not half as frustrated as all those who got the new iPhone, or who tried to upgrade the software on their old iPhone, and are now waiting for the servers to let them get in and activate it.

I empathise with those who are suffering. If it hadn’t been for O2 I’d have been having the same trouble as the iPhone owners today. See, clouds do have silver linings.

I have to say this has surprised me— first fighting go get my newly transmorgrafied .mac to me.com aps to work (as of this afternoon, all seems to finally be well) to watching TWiT Live and hear of the woes of those who stood in lines for hours to only leave with an expensive 911 dialing devise. The fingers immediately pointed towards AT&T for the server woes at first this morning, but reports seem to be that servers bearing the logo of a particular fruit may truly be the culprit.

I enjoy my apple products and tout their functionality to others, but this is not a good day for Apple. I would not want to be in the line of fire of one turtleneck wearing CEO today.

For me, I’m in the strange position of wanting the iPhone process to go smoothly as a friend that loves gadgets is getting a new iphone today and giving me his old iPhone. I’m not going to complain, for beggars can’t be choosers and I’m sure there are some people in Cupertino begging for an end to this day.

Can’t believe I was stupid enough to do the 2.0 upgrade on my Gen 1 iPhone this morning around 10 am EDT. I got the “We could not complete your ITunes Store request” at the end of the upgrade process. Went out to lunch with my wife and when I got back the phone was syncing Restoring Music and Video. Well it still is (16:35 EDT). Keeping my fingers crossed.

I did get a text msg from AT&T telling me that the 3G phones are in. So at least that works.

I read where people had downloaded the 2.0 last night and had no issues so I went ahead and updated today. If I knew that contacting the mothership was part of the upgrade I would have never tried it today and waited till later.

The more I think about this, the more pissed I’m getting.

I’m in Fort Wayne, Indiana - population 250,000, nearly half a million with the nearby suburbs. We’re not NYC, but we’re not some small hick town either.

We have three AT&T stores here - nearest Apple Store is in Indianapolis. The AT&T store that I went to had about 100 people in the line I think. They had a total of THIRTY phones. The black 16GB sold out in about 5 minutes - the rest sold out in the next 15 or so.

When they came out and told us about them being out - they said that ALL stores in Fort Wayne were sold out. So I’m guessing that they put 90 phones or so (not counting employee phones) in a market of 250,000-500,000 people? Huh?

So, I have a drop ship order coming next week, which may be ok since all of the activation issues have cropped up - but I’m still pissed that AT&T + Apple didn’t have even 100 phones in my area. It’s not like they weren’t going to sell, and they could have probably sold 1000 phones to happy customers today. If they overstocked, after the weekend they could have shipped out any of the overstock to other stores on Monday.

Feels suspiciously like an artificial shortage for promotion purposes. This date has been out the for a LONG time - Apple has had shipping containers coming in for months. There is NO shortage - why do I have to wait for a drop ship?

It better get here quick, or I’ll just wait for the next one and hope they’ve learned something about distribution.

Concerning the iphone:

First the iPhone 3G has basically become an AT&T product. Can you have a fully functional iphone without a service contract from AT&T (in the US)? No. Therefore the iphone is now additionally defined by the contract it works from/the service you get. AT&T has far lower standards and doesn’t care that “your experience is degraded”. Second, did anyone expect them to actually make and distribute enough so everyone would get a phone and be able to update and process on day 1?! If you did you’re nuts. First of all, they want scarcity, scarcity = talk = money. They figure that you will wait regardless and they, being apple, are right. In two weeks when all the hardcores have their phones, and the rest rethink their decision to wait (a sensible one) everyone will applaud apple on what a “success” this was.

Concerning mobile me, itunes, software updates:

Servers do this thing called crashing when too many people get on for things… and EVERYONE GOT ON. All I can say is, if this happened to Microsoft, we would be hearing about it forever, and we usually do. I’m no windows fan in the least (I’d rather use a mac, but I have to use windows because of 3D modelers) but the tech press will magically forget all the problems come time for a new release and be deluded yet again that Apple is ready this time to handle the load. I had to laugh when I heard it… “so a product that had lots of customers day one (and lots of problems day one) will magically have no problems even though it has 10x more customers all wanting it the same day? Sorry, but this is just logic.

Thank you for being a voice of reason Merlin. People need to chill out and wait. If we got this excited about voting or social issues we might do something amazing… Anyways, end of rant, sorry about being that guy… just had to say it. Sure the distortion field is fun, I loved Leo’s coverage and all the press… but I’m still sensible enough to know when problems are coming and when a phone isn’t worth all this…

Here in Japan Softbank’s system went down and they started sending people home with the box and a photocopy of how to activate the phone. It also looks like foreigners living in Japan might have a hard time getting the phone.

The one piece I'd been dreaming of with this whole deal was having OmniFocus sync with my iPhone. With the location aware contexts, talk about ubiquitous capture. IMHO OmniFocus syncing was just as big a debacle as Apple's iPhone server one. There is no shortage of disappointed, frustrated Omni customers out there too, even many hardcore Omni fans like me. My blow by blow of the 2.0 upgrade and my OmniFocus syncing matches the experience of many judging from the forums I've been on.

On the upside, from the app store to multiple email delete there were many eventual perks to the 2.0 upgrade. The OF iPhone app is great on its own and worth buying if you don't have, and don't want OF for your mac. For those of us who bought it for syncing, Omni seems to be working on it, their customer service remains as responsive as ever...and when they do finally get it working reliably for most folks, that is going to be one kick ass combo.

I think it was a mistake though for Omni to tout syncing as a current selling point, when the desktop requirement is still in alpha. As a business owner myself, I know that you have to be up front about how things actually are. You can't advertise hopes as reality and expect to have satisfied customers.