NEW YORK (AP) -- The launch of Apple Inc.'s much-anticipated new iPhone turned into an information-technology meltdown on Friday, as customers were unable to get their phones working.
Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T's wireless unit, shows the iPhone 3G to customers outside an AT&T store in Atlanta.
"It's such grief and aggravation," said Frederick Smalls, an insurance broker in Whitman, Massachusetts, after spending two hours on the phone with Apple and AT&T Inc., trying to get his new iPhone to work.
In stores, people waited at counters to get the phones activated, as lines built behind them. Many of the customers had already camped out for several hours in line to become among the first with the new phone, which updates the one launched a year ago by speeding Internet access and adding a navigation chip.
A spokesman for AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the United States, said there was a global problem with Apple's iTunes servers that prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store, as had been planned. Watch reasons why you might want to hold off buying an iPhone »
Instead, employees were telling buyers to go home and perform the last step by connecting their phones to their own computers, spokesman Michael Coe said.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/07/11/iphone.sales.ap/index.html
