AT&T calls for backup on iPhone Day
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Blog: Anticipating long lines and eager crowds, AT&#38;T is dialing up 2,000 extra workers for additional security at its stores.
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Linksys' rebranding coup Ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome the iPhone from... er... Linksys. Yes, the iPhone has indeed been launched today, as forecast, but it's not the device so many people were expecting. Instead, it's Linksys' new brand name for its range of VoIP handsets.â¦
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With AT&T reportedly having activated over 600,000 iPhones as of Monday, it's no surprise that European carriers are eager to jump on Apple's bandwagon. Numerous reports have pointed to wireless carrier O2 being chosen as Apple's exclusive iPhone partner in the United Kingdom.
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AT&T unveiled business plans for Appleâs iPhone, the first time that the mobile carrier has courted corporate customers of the smart phone.
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InfoWorld - Apple&#39;s&#160;iPhone launch&#160;has been marred by delays in AT&amp;T&#39;s phone activation system, leaving some people unable to use their new toy throughout the weekend.
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The second lengthy&#160;BlackBerry outage&#160;in less than a year has one consulting company advising clients not to rely solely on the popular smart phones for critical e-mail messages.Enterprises that really need e-mail responses in less than eight hours to run their businesses should have a backup for the BlackBerry, Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said Tuesday, in the wake of a crash that lasted about three hours on Monday. They should also set up an independent system to notify them whether an important contact has received or replied to an e-mail message, Dulaney said.Late Tuesday, RIM said the outage was caused by a problem with an internal data routing system in the BlackBerry service infrastructure that had recently been upgraded. That upgrade was part of an ongoing expansion of the network, and this type of change had been done previously with no problems, it said.Monday&#39;s failure followed&#160;a longer outage in April 2007&#160;that RIM attributed to a problem with a minor software upgrade and a subsequent glitch in a failover process.There are about 12 million BlackBerry users worldwide, on a variety of mobile carriers. The crash Monday affected users throughout the U.S. and Canada, preventing them from sending or receiving e-mail or carrying out some other functions, though&#160;no messages were permanently lost, according to RIM.Gartner&#39;s Dulaney had harsh words for RIM, saying he had given the company a break after last year&#39;s failure.&quot;This does not appear to be a mission-critical system with the highest service-level agreements, and therefore, to entrust ... that a message will get to the end point is being a bit foolhardy,&quot; Dulaney said. He advises enterprises that are worried about dependability to ask RIM for details of its backup system and make their own decisions.After last year&#39;s outage, RIM said it would enhance aspects of its testing, monitoring and recovery processes.&quot;RIM has made significant investments to improve its system recovery infrastructure and processes over the last year, which enabled service levels to return to normal quickly,&quot; the company said Tuesday.&quot;They obviously didn&#39;t do as deep a dive as they needed to on disaster recovery issues,&quot; Dulaney said. But he acknowledged the failure could have been caused by something completely unexpected.The BlackBerry, which RIM introduced in 1999, quickly became the most popular tool for mobile &quot;push&quot; e-mail that automatically comes to a portable device with a wireless network connection. All current BlackBerry models are also phones, and the company now offers a wide variety of handsets with consumer-oriented features such as cameras, Web browsers and social-networking capabilities. But to get to and from the handhelds, e-mail messages traverse a complex system involving mobile operator networks, RIM&#39;s network operation centers and BlackBerry Enterprise Servers within companies.Adding consumer features and keeping up with rapid customer growth, such as adding 1.65 million users in the quarter ended last Dec. 1, have probably made it harder for RIM to keep its network running smoothly, said Albert Lin, an analyst at investment bank Sooner Cap. But users accept some level of risk if they want such complex services at reasonable prices, he said. The only truly reliable system is the public switched telephone network, and it has limited functionality, Lin said.&quot;When it comes to reliable push e-mail ... it&#39;s still hard to find a solution that works better than BlackBerry,&quot; Lin said.Gartner&#39;s Dulaney acknowledged that competitors, such as Visto and Good Technology (now owned by Motorola), are probably not significantly more dependable.It wouldn&#39;t be impossible to make the RIM network more reliable, the analysts said.&quot;They have the technical capability to spend more and make it more reliable, but is that what their owners and shareholders really want?&quot; Lin said.Google, for example, has a more highly distributed network, but that would take money and time, and many customers wouldn&#39;t want to pay for it, Dulaney said. In the future, RIM may choose to create a higher-end service with greater service assurances and a higher price, he said.
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(InfoWorld) - A company that insures laptops and smartphones may save the day for iPhone owners worried about their pricey handsets getting stolen or damaged. The just-introduced device costs $499 or $599, depending on storage, and has a slippery, rounded design with a glass touchscreen that covers most of its face. Yet AT&T, the exclusive mobile operator for the phone, won't sell insurance for it. And although Apple offers the AppleCare extended warranty for almost all its hardware products, the plan is not yet available for the iPhone. (Apple says it will start offering AppleCare for the phone some time this month.) Some participants on the cell phone site HowardForums said they were disappointed those types of coverage weren't available. Now, a third party is thinking about stepping in. A flood of potential customers have contacted Safeware about getting their iPhones insured, said Matt Wagner, executive vice president and general counsel of the Columbus, Ohio, company. Safeware has been in business insuring PCs since 1982 and started covering smartphones a few years ago, Wagner said. Before the iPhone went on sale in the United States last Friday, Apple's secrecy made it hard to evaluate, he said. "Now that it is released, we're kind of scrambling to find out if it's something we want to get into or not," Wagner said. Availability of parts and repair facilities are among the issues the insurer is examining. Safeware's portable electronics policy covers accidental damage, theft, vandalism, power surges, and natural disasters in the United States and Canada, according to the company's Web site. Coverage includes both the device and preinstalled software, and on a standard policy there is no deductible. Typical prices were not immediately available. AT&T prices its policies, provided by insurance company Asurion, at $4.99 per month. But the iPhone is so expensive that insurance for it would be too pricey for AT&T to market to consumers, the carrier said. For the same reason, AT&T won't sell insurance for Palm's Treo, Research in Motion's BlackBerry, and some other high-end handsets. Rival Verizon Wireless, by contrast, will insure any phone it sells. Also working through Asurion, it charges $4.99 per month with a $50 deductible. The iPhone does come with a one-year Apple warranty against "defects in materials and workmanship under normal use," according to Apple's Web site. AppleCare, when available, will extend that coverage for as long as two additional years. Apple hasn't said how much it will cost. Customers will have to sign up for AppleCare while the initial warranty is still in effect. To help customers stay connected while the iPhone is being fixed, Apple can provide an AppleCare Service Phone that can be sent from Apple or picked up at the Apple Store. But the loaner doesn't come free: There's a flat $29 "service fee," plus additional charges if the user doesn't return it on time after they get their own phone back. And as a warranty, AppleCare won't get you a new iPhone if yours is damaged by accident or stolen. Many people wouldn't need to take out a separate policy for an iPhone, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Most homeowner's or renter's policies would cover theft or damage to the phone, even if it were stolen from their car, said Mike Barry, a spokesman for the group. However, Safeware's Wagner said those policies typically don't cover a portable electronic device outside of the owner's home or car. Ironically, while AT&T won't insure the iPhone because it's too expensive, the Institute thinks the iPhone wouldn't be worth a separate policy because it isn't valuable enough. "It really wouldn't make much economic sense to have a policy taken out separately for the iPhone," he said.
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A new software-based unlocking scheme for your iPhone makes it easier for those of us without soldering skills to leave AT&T. But the good times probably won't last.
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By Brier Dudley, Seattle Times  Jun. 25--I don't know if they realize it, but those people lining up to buy Apple iPhones on Friday are guinea pigs.   They may be after a nice phone or the newest version of the iPod.
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Blog: A report surfaced Friday--also known as iPhone Day--that Apple and several European carriers will announce their launch plans on Monday for a 3G version of the iPhone.
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Blog: AT&T's wireless data subscribers complained of outages and a slow network Monday, but the company says it wasn't due to the iPhone.
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Apple Inc. and AT&T Inc. today unveiled three new service plans for the iPhone; all offer unlimited data transfers and range in price from $60 to $100 a month.
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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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AT&T Mobility LLC has received more than 1 million inquiries for Apple Inc.'s multimedia and Web-enabled iPhone cell phone, the San Antonio company said.
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Customers lined up in droves, some for days, but plenty of the phones are still available for the taking.Photos: Big Apple gets the iPhone
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What's the best way to beat the  commitment involved in iPhone ownership? Bad credit. AT&T Inc.   said on Friday that people who buy Apple Inc.'s   much-hyped iPhone but do not meet its credit requirements will  still be able to keep the phone without having to commit to a  two-year contract.
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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."