iPhone Launch Marred by Activation Delays
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Delays in AT&T's phone activation system left some people unable to use their new toy throughout the weekend.
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The rush to buy the iPhone strained the company's servers, leaving a lot of customers unable to activate their phones.
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Users eager to get their hands on an iPhone may have June 29 circled on their calendars to mark the mobile device&#8217;s announced ship date.
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iFraud Fraudsters have been busy at work exploiting the hype surrounding last week's launch of the Apple iPhone.â¦
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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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The Canadian launch of Apple&#39;s iTunes music-download service, which was expected to take place by the end of November, has been postponed.
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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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If you were watching television Sunday night, you might have seen the commercials for the highly anticipated Apple iPhone. The commercials indicate the official launch date is June 29.
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Apple released an update for iTunes on Friday in preparation for the iPhone. Version 7.3 allows the user to activate their iPhone service through the application.
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Blog: With patience wearing thin because of iPhone's bugs I consider restoring the iPhone's settings.
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Blog: With all of the hoopla surrounding the iPhone, we have all forgotten about the most important development of today's release: a new way to activate a cell phone.
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CHICAGO _ The anticipation for Friday's release of Apple Inc.'s iPhone continues to build, but there is a mobile service launching this week that also holds the potential to significantly alter the wireless landscape.
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With under six hours to go, some people in line for the iPhone in New York are seeing if they could make a few bucks off the product hype by selling their places in line. As far as I can tell, there have not yet been any takers. From Crave, CNET's gadgets blog.
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(InfoWorld) - A company that unlocks cell phones in Europe said it is close to having an application that will allow customers to unlock their Apple iPhones so they can use SIM cards from carriers other than AT&T to activate the phones. In an interview this week in New York, John McLaughlin, founder of Belfast, U.K.-based Uniquephones, said he has engineers working around the clock in several countries who are close to cracking the complex security system Apple has set up to ensure customers can only use iPhones with AT&T Wireless service. The race by hackers to unlock iPhones has been on since the phone was released last Friday. Currently, AT&T Wireless has an exclusive deal with Apple to provide service for iPhones, and customers must agree to a two-year service plan with the company. However, customers have complained that the carrier's wireless service is slow, and according to McLaughlin, there has been tremendous interest in the ability to unlock the phone. By Sunday night, he said, more than 150,000 inquires had come in through the Web site he set up to request IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers from customer iPhones. While not everyone would volunteer their IMEI numbers, they still expressed interest in learning how to unlock their iPhones, McLaughlin said. When the site was set up, he thought it would be an easy case of supplying unlock codes from AT&T to unlock iPhones. But sometime over the weekend after iPhones went on sale, unlock codes from AT&T for about 6,000 iPhones disappeared from the carrier's database, and McLaughlin's team also realized it would be a more complex matter than simply providing an unlock code to release iPhones from AT&T's grip. There is at least a two-step process to unlocking an iPhone, McLaughlin said. His team has been able to unlock the activation process to the AT&T SIM card specific to an iPhone so another AT&T SIM card can work with the phone and be activated through iTunes. However, any attempt to change the firmware of an iPhone so it can support another carrier's SIM card breaks the phone, he said. The key to unlocking the phone is breaking the encryption process that protects the token sent through the iTunes activation process to an iPhone's firmware, McLaughlin believes. Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD John" because he cracked the DVD encryption scheme, claims he's been able to unlock the iPhone beyond the activation process that requires an AT&T account but said the device can't be used as a phone when that happens. Even after an iPhone were unlocked, it still could only work on carrier networks that support the GSM network, which is what AT&T's service is based on. In the U.S., T-Mobile is the only major carrier on a GSM network. And there is no guarantee Apple will not lock down the phones again in a future firmware update through the iPhone synchronization process or create a new way to unlock the next wave of iPhones they put on the market. That is, in fact, exactly what one analyst said will happen. "I assume that someone will succeed in unlocking the iPhone," said Avi Greengart, principal analyst, mobile devices at Current Analysis. "I also assume Apple will close whatever loophole is open the next time they synchronize [the software]." It's also likely there will be complications with special features of the phone that are designed to work only on AT&T's network, such as the visual voicemail feature, he said. Greengart said that he sympathizes with those that might want to use an iPhone with another carrier but "that's not the way the product was designed." "Exclusive agreements are not that unusual in this industry at all," he said. Aaron Santell, an iPhone user in New York, said that he would have preferred to use the service provider he has for his Blackberry device, Verizon Wireless, when he purchased an iPhone. But using AT&T's service is "a small price to pay" to use a device that provides such a rich user experience as the iPhone does, he said. As one might imagine, unlocking phones is a thorny issue with carriers, which certainly don't condone it. Carriers will give users unlock codes upon request for a fee, but they don't encourage the practice. In the U.K. and Europe, third parties have been unlocking handsets for several years, although there is no law that specifically protects them, McLaughlin said. However, in the U.S., it is legal to unlock mobile handsets under an amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that was passed in November 2006. McLaughlin said that even though it's legal in the U.S. to unlock phones, he anticipates that if his team is successful, Apple may take legal action against them based on their tinkering with the firmware. "They'll probably come after us for copyright infringement," he said. Apple did not reply to requests for comment Thursday. McLaughlin plans to charge customers about $49.99 for software to unlock iPhones. Even if Uniquephones is not the first to offer unlocking capability, it won't be hard for them to replicate what others have done once the encryption is cracked, he added.
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While it doesn't match the hysteria of iPhone Day, hundreds of people still turn out to wait hours in line for the newest version of Mac OS X--even though they could have preordered a copy weeks ago.
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Blog: Group claims it can unbind the iPhone from a specific carrier to "expand the functionality" of the device.
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As they wait to nab an iPhone, early risers across the country are seeking to share their experience in real time.