Activation problems plague iPhone debut
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iPhone buyers who tried to activate their new phones and port telephone numbers from other mobile carriers ran into trouble Friday night and Saturday, with many reporting hours-long delays in getting their phones working.
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According to Saul Hansell at the NY Times, Apple intends to break phones that have been unlocked.  But Francine Hardaway and Patrick Scoble both updated this afternoon, and bad things happened. Hardaway's phone was "fried," she needed a new phone, and Scoble lost all his data. Hardaway: "Trust me, I didn't hack it." Jeff Clavier: "This effing piece of s..t is bricked." Robert Scoble, Patrick's dad, updated successfully, and got the new features. Spaley's iPhone is "a useless piece of crap." Looks like Josh Bancroft's iPhone was hosed too. I would hold off on the update until we find out what's going wrong.  Sugar Attack: "It wasn't until I saw a friend tweet about the new iPhone firmware upgrade that I realized I could now access the iTunes WiFi store."
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On the eve of the iPhone's June 29 arrival, wireless-industry insiders are scrambling to understand their customers before Apple takes them away. The trouble is, they can't seem to agree on the problem, let alone the solution.
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Apple Inc.  said on Tuesday  its hotly anticipated iPhone could cost as much as $3,000 with  a required two-year service contract, but a handful of eager  fans still lined up early to spend their money.
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When they purchase an iPhone, customers can use iTunes on a Mac or PC to activate their new phones in the comfort and privacy of their homes or offices instead of waiting for activation in a store. With iTunes guiding them through the simple steps of choosing a service plan, authorizing their credit, and activating their iPhone, they can complete the activation process in minutes. Following activation, new iPhone customers can again use iTunes to easily sync their phone numbers and other contact information, calendars, email accounts, web browser bookmarks, music, photos, podcasts, TV shows, and movies with iPhone.
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(InfoWorld) - Hackers may successfully unlock an iPhone in as soon as three to seven days, according to a representative of one effort that aims to unlockÂ Apple's new handset. "We believe it will be easy. We are privately aware many of the iPhone engineers came from other handset manufacturers, and we understand their design techniques fairly well," said gj, speaking in an interview conducted using IRC (Internet Relay Chat). He requested that his real name not be used. "Easy to us means inside one week," he said, offering an estimate of three to seven days. Unlocking the iPhone means users will be able to use the handset with other service providers, not just AT&T, which has an exclusive deal to sell the phone in the U.S. By Tuesday night, U.S. time, hackers succeeded in cracking the iPhone's activation process, a minor step towards unlocking the iPhone but a significant technical challenge. The activation process uses a software token that is sent from the phone via iTunes to Apple, which signs the token and returns it to the phone. When that process is completed, iTunes tells the phone to activate. Hackers developed tools for both Windows and MacOS that allow users to activate their phones without iTunes. But users will have to use a token from an activated iPhone, which can be used to activate multiple phones. The hackers are not providing a token with the tools. "If you don't have a known token (which does contain identifying information) you won't be able to use the tool," gj said. At least one other hacker found a way to activate the iPhone without using iTunes. Jon Lech Johansen -- better known as DVD Jon, a hacker who helped develop the DeCSS tool for decrypting DVDs -- released a tool that can activate the iPhone without iTunes on his blog. "The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and Wi-Fi work," Johansen wrote. Cracking the activation process brings hackers one step closer to their goal of unlocking the iPhone. The phone requires iTunes to activate functions such as its camera and music player. But the process also requires signing up for a two-year data plan with AT&T. "Activating the phone really just makes the device more 'usable' for those who want to use it as a Wi-Fi device, for instance," gj said. With the activation process cracked hackers turned their focus to unlocking the iPhone, a challenge that is expected to be easier than cracking the activation process. "Unlocking is a function of the radio and the radio's interaction with the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) logic, and these are mostly standards based," gj said. A rumored software update for the iPhone, expected to be released on July 5, could undo some of the progress hackers made towards unlocking the phone. "If Apple releases an update on July 5th that includes 'fixes' for our efforts so far, it will be a setback," gj said. "I don't know if it will be a permanent one." Hackers working together to unlock the iPhone don't belong to a specific group, and don't plan to claim credit for their work, gj said. "We just want to see the hardware freed. We accept that others will exploit those works but hopefully it will be a lesson to Apple," he said. "They're such a great company, it's a real shame for them to lock everything down like this. The design is top notch," he said. "They would win far more business by setting an example for the industry."
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As Apple's new gadget debuts, some start-ups are looking to reinvent mobile-phone service
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Blog: Security was reportedly tight as the iPhones get ready to make their stateside debut this Friday.
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Unlocking the iPhone is proving to be more difficult than some hackers had expected.
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SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK  - Thousands of U.S. gadget  fans flocked to stores on Friday to be the first buyers of  Apple's iPhone, a music-playing and Web-browsing device  expected to shake up the mobile industry.
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AT&T says it activated only 146,000 iPhones in the first two days the device was for sale.
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Apple warned that iPhone owners who have used unauthorized programs to unlock the cellular service feature of their handsets may end up with a phone that does not work.
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Hacker Jon Lech Johansen, known widely as &quot;DVD Jon,&quot; has cracked Apple&#39;s iPhone activation, or so he claims, meaning that iPhone buyers will be able to activate and use the new handset without having to commit to an AT&T wireless contract. Johansen announced his feat in a blog post entitled &quot;iPhone Independence Day.&quot;
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(InfoWorld) - After standing in line for hours on Friday to buy the new Apple iPhone, some users were forced to wait even longer to activate the phones, while others found the store shelves empty and will have to wait another week for their phones to arrive in the mail. On Monday, staff at an AT&T store in Boston said they had run out of iPhones on Friday night while a line of customers still snaked out the door. People at the back of the line purchased their phones through "direct fulfillment" and will receive their phones through the mail in three to seven days, the store said. AT&T declined to release sales figures but said that virtually all of its stores have sold out of iPhones. Over the weekend, AT&T referred disappointed customers to the Apple Web site but now says it plans to begin selling iPhones through its online store as well, said AT&T spokesman Michael Coe. He did not give a date. AT&T downplayed the reported activation delays. "The vast majority of iPhone customers have completed the activation process in just a few minutes as planned," Coe said. "Only a very small number of customers who purchased an iPhone this weekend are experiencing issues with activation, and all our energies are focused on clearing up these difficulties just as quickly as possible." Apple did not return calls for comment. Some analysts blamed the delays on heavy user traffic. "AT&T's servers were slow due to the mass number of sign-ups in the first few hours with credit checks. This may have delayed some purchasing of iPhones," said Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research, in his Monday report to investors. Other customers experienced delays when they tried to switch to AT&T from other carriers, he said. Still, Wu upgraded his stock estimate for the company and predicted that the iPhone would become the fastest-selling product in Apple's history. Within three years, Apple could become one of the top smartphone vendors, changing the competitive landscape of that industry. Even customers who took their iPhones home on Friday faced potential delays in activating them. Users who registered their phones on the iTunes Web site saw a warning that the process could take between 24 and 48 hours, said Craig Henry, a 32-year-old IT administrator at a law firm in Massachusetts. Henry's wait lasted for three hours when he received an e-mail confirmation that his phone was activated. However, he soon faced another challenge when he tried to transfer his address book to the iPhone. "The hardest part for me was transferring my phone numbers because I was on Verizon and didn't have the software to keep the numbers on my PC. So I spent an hour typing in about 150 numbers," he said. He also had to get accustomed to the touchscreen interface, which relies completely on finger drags, flicks, and pinches instead of using hard keys. "It takes a little bit of getting used to. But the typing works fine; I was sending text messages all day on Saturday," Henry said. "When you're in the contacts sheet, you run your finger across the screen -- kind of like flicking a marble -- and it scrolls really fast, or you can drag it and scroll slowly." Many users were concerned about iPhone battery life, an issue that Apple tried to address on June 18 by upgrading the original battery before the product even launched. Still, Henry visited an Apple store on Saturday to buy a second charger so that he could power his iPhone both in his home and his office. Despite the hurdles of learning to use his new gadget, Henry said he suffered no buyer's remorse. "I was out on Saturday night, and everybody knew I had it and wanted to touch it," Henry said. "They made a little fun of me for waiting in line so long, but I don't think the wait was too bad. When people see it, they're amazed by it."
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The Apple iPhone, the most-anticipated gadget debut in years, went on sale Friday in the eastern United States, ending months of waiting for diehard Apple fans and signaling the start of what could be the company's biggest test yet.
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InfoWorld - Consumers planning to buy&#160;the iPhone when it goes on sale in the U.S. later this month will need to have an iTunes Store account before they can activate the device, according to information on Apple Inc.&#39;s Web site.
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Apple Inc. on Monday warned iPhone owners who have used unauthorized programs to unlock the cellular service feature of their handsets that they may end up with a phone that doesn't work after the company's next software update for it.