Apple says six hundred thousand iPhone 4s were pre-ordered yesterday — more than ten times the number of pre-orders for the iPhone 3GS — and who knows how much higher the number would have been, if AT&T’s untested, unsecured, utterly unusable ordering system hadn’t gone down in flames.
Unfortunately, those wannabe pre-orderers, the ones who would’ve pushed that 600,000 number even higher if AT&T’s broken infrastructure had allowed it, will now have a long wait on their hands. AT&T, plagued by truly stunning and disturbing security breaches in addition to the comparatively tame pre-ordering apocalypse, has suspended pre-orders completely, and Apple has delayed the “ships by” date of “pre-orders” through its system to July 14, fully three weeks after the phones arrive in stores.
Um, guys? At that point, it’s no longer a “pre-order.” Just sayin’.
Anyway, I just hope AT&T will honor its promise that my pen-and-paper, 9:45 AM Tuesday pre-order, which was apparently entered into the computer system around 5:00 PM Mountain Time yesterday (per the local sales rep), will be delivered no later than Monday, June 28. We shall see.