The only thing that will #$%! up the iPhone is AT&T.
My brother called with an update this morning on his new gadget… the iBrick. Even though he was number 6 in line and a current customer of AT&T, AT&T has not been able to activate the iPhone more than 12 hours later. According to my brother, there is a world that rotates on the screen during activation stopping you from even syncing your tunes or doing anything at all with the iPhone until the activation process has ended. He does like the the form factor and feel of the iPhone.
Apparently there are rumors that the EDGE network got a bit of an upgrade on Wednesday or Thursday resulting in a faster connection. Even Jobs called the AT&T’s EDGE network slow:
You know every (AT&T) Blackberry gets its mail over EDGE. It turns out EDGE is great for mail, and it works well for maps and a whole bunch of other stuff. Where you wish you had faster speed is…on a Web browser. It’s good enough, but you wish it was a little faster.
Now I bet Jobs just wishes AT&T could simply activate the iPhones. I wish I could be on the crisis management call to hear Jobs chew out Stephenson about the horrible roll-out.
By the way, it looks like iPhones are still in stock at AT&T and Apple stores.