Server crashes must be good PR at Apple

Just for the record, I did not buy a new iPhone.

I wonder if a certain amount of problems is actually good for business. It seems like Apple still can’t keep the iTunes server up for iPhone activations.

I was at the University Village Apple store this morning when it opened, and the first batch (they could help 11 people at a time) stayed in the store for a full 40 minutes, trying to activate their new phones. Eventually they started just letting people wander off (read: without in-store activation) after the phones failed to activate on the third try.

I think that if Apple had actually wanted to, they could probably have spent a little bit of time making sure the iTunes server would stay up today. But I guess it’s better PR to be able to say “so many people bought the phone that our system crashed, and most of them couldn’t use their phones at all for a while after they bought them!”

Update: here’s the word from Gizmodo on what they call the iPocalypse:

So How Did This Happen:
The source of the iTunes crash/slowdown seems not be those buying iPhone 3Gs from Apple/AT&T stores at all but the millions of people updating to the new firmware at home. Firmware 2.0 isn’t like other firmwares in that it needs to update the phone and reauthenticate the service. And in turn, when the servers are slammed and the phone reaches for reauthentication, the server isn’t always there to reactivate the service. This is how some of those newly bricked iPhones are occurring, and a source tells us that even first gen iPhones are susceptible.

Good thing I did my firmware update yesterday ;)