Last Fridays roll out of the iPhone 3g was one of the biggest blunders in tech history.

Apple now wants you to buy the new iPhone 3g at retail so they can activate your product but more importantly they lock you into your phone contract (where all the real revenue is).

So this on-site Activation is really a man made road block.

This simple activation process collapsed on Friday under the sheer weight of activation activity. This left people with either brand new iPhones that would not work (activation failed).

Worse still their existing 1^st generation iPhone’s were temporarily “bricked” because it could not re-activate due to the activation servers being offline while they tried to upgrade to the free iPhone 2.0 Update.

Apple need to realise the iPhone isn’t a toy, it’s a phone and when thousands of customers can’t use their phones they are frankly unhappy.

Likewise if you just bought a new iPhone that’s going to cost you £600+ and you can’t use it. It must be very frustrating.

So what went wrong?

First let’s look at some numbers.

iPhone 1.0 customers = 20m+ and of those interested in a Day1 upgrade to the free iPhone 2.0 Upgrade is placed at about 6m.

The iPod Touch was eligible for a paid upgrade to the 2.0 Software upgrade.

I can’t see any numbers for touch users so let’s conservatively call it 500,000 users.

Finally the new iPhone 3g users, it 1m (the original iPhone did 128,000 first day sales) but the iPhone 3g was launched internationally.

So a minimum of 7.5m people intent on getting activated on the 2.0 software.

Note you need the 2.0 Update to download Apps to your Apple device (iPhone 1.0 or iPod Touch).

That’s a big number but Apple is in the content distribution business they can handle it.

On paper yes they can, they delivery an unimaginable amount of data via iTunes every day. But they made one mistake they forgot about the wisdom of a 6m+ crowd looking for a free upgrade.

The real problem started on Thursday. They seeded the App Store in iTunes.Don’t underestimate a bored iPhone user looking for some distraction. From that moment the iPhone 1.0/iPod Touch users start on mass upgrading to iTunes 7.7 and pressing the “check for update” looking for the illusive and in most cases free 2.0 update.

Now its human nature for people to keep pressing buttons in this case check for update if they think something’s going to happen imminently but doesn’t.

So the check for update crowd starts swarming from 5pm on Thursday as news travels around the Internet the App store is live.

If the App Store is live I must be missing something where is my 2.0 update, check for update.

And so on.

By the time the iPhone 3g launches 12/16 hours later millions of people are frantically pressing the check for update. This puts the Activation infrastructure under strain as installing the 2.0 Update requires Re-Activation.

Apple eventually seed the 2.0 update and people start downloading, but the sheer force of the numbers overload the activation servers. So people could download the 2.0 update but not activate leaving them in limbo without a working iPhone.

So those poor people standing in line for an iPhone 3g may be able to get one but had no way of activating or using it.

So one of the largest ever tech roll out’s fails miserably with some really upset customers.

Free Advice for Apple

Don’t roll out internationally if you can’t handle it.

Stagger the roll out. The 2.0 upgrade could have come out either a week before or after the iPhone 3g launch. The person who decided to globally launch 2.0 in one movement made a BIG mistake.

Update: This seems to work for some but not others. See the comments.

If you are having difficulty installing this update try temporarily disabling any Anti-Virus or Spyware software.

In my particular case I use Nod32 and after the Software downloaded the 222mb file it would fail with the error pictured above.

After I disabled Nod32 my Anti-Virus product (you can do this from the taskbar) my installation completed successfully.

Remember to re-enable your Anti-Virus or Spyware software once you have completed the upgrade.

I’m not making this up in Walt Mossberg’s video review of the 3g iPhone he says a couple of days in his two week trial the battery didn’t last the full day.

He goes into this topic around 2:20 of the clip below.

Now you can imagine the problems having a phone with a non removable battery that doesn’t last a full day. You end up with no form of communication.

All that GPS, 3g, Google Maps, Visual Voicemail go out the window if the device doesn’t have the juice to turn on.

In the keynote for the iPhone 3g Steve Jobs took great pleasure in announcing “better battery life”.

Can you imagine a keynote where the claims were a bit more realistic.

Hi, I’m Steve Jobs

This is the iPhone 3g, we think its cool, we think you going to love it, isn’t this just amazing, look at that screen its gorgeous, but if you plan on using it all day the battery probably wont last. 

Anyway watch Walt’s review which is generally positive but he does point out the fact its more expensive to own than 1st generation iPhone.

Link: http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080708/newer-faster-cheaper-iphone-3g/

I love gadgets and I do like to get a new phone every year.

However it hasn’t gone unnoticed at DiPonio central the cost of everyday essentials are going through the roof.

With the hype surrounding this weeks launch of the iPhone 3g. I wonder how many people have figured out the total cost of ownership.

There are other issues like do you actually have 3g coverage where you live/work. I have had a 3g enabled phone for about 3 years and I wonder if this 3g dream people are expecting of being permanently connected is actually going to work out.

The other sexy phone on the market is the HTC Touch Diamond

I could pick one up for £433 inc VAT and just pop in my SIM card.

So when compared to the cost of the iPhone the HTC Touch is much more affordable.

However lets be honest the HTC Diamond is just another Windows Mobile device with a shiny face. It doesn’t help that it has a User Interface running on top of a User Interface.

I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t want either device but at £639 or £433 respectively I think I am going to pass.

My current HTC Touch is small, light, has good battery life and most importantly I already own it.

Today Apple announced that the iTunes music store has now sold over 5 Billions songs.

As if that wasn’t enough they are now the No.1 Music retailer in the US.

I can’t be bothered to complain about DRM/Quality or Cost.

No I look on today as a tiny bit of history.

Vinyl > Tape > CD > Download.

Bricks and Mortar > Digital.

Game over Cupertino wins.

By the time my Kids grow up and want to purchase music the world will be a different place.

By far and away the best digital distribution model available today is offered by Steam. If I buy a game from Steam I can play it on any computer I sign into and install the Steam client on.

This iTunes model of Download, License, Backup or Else is just plain dumb in comparison.

I would imagine a subscription based model is the next big thing.

Link: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/06/19itunes.html