Your Activation Requires Additional Time to Complete

This doesn't ring true. I at first tried to transfer a number I've been using on Cingular Prepay and iTunes wouldn't let me, so I decided on a new activation. Since I'm not transferring a number, then I should have gotten immediate activation. I, however, got the subject message and am still waiting two hours later for the activation email.

I am very pleased with Apple for the way things went at the store. I didn't even get in line at my local store until 7:30 PM and was home with my iPhone by 8:30 PM, so the waiting & purchasing process took well less than an hour.

And kudos to Apple for (once) having enough inventory to meet the needs of all interested buyers. I've never experienced that before with a new Apple product introduction.

And I'm not terribly upset with the activation delay because I figured if there would be a fly in this ointment it was going to be AT&T. I'm sure when we all hear what the iPhone sales figures were for today, we'll all understand why AT&T's system couldn't handle all of the activations smoothly. Between all the activations and all the new phones using the networks, I'm sure this will be the biggest stress test that AT&T's network ever gets.

Hopefully we'll all have activated iPhones by tomorrow morning!

an at&t guy just told me they were backed up 3-6 hours because there were thousands of people activating

if only one could have predicted that somehow...

how did at&t become so big?

where their competitors *even more* incompetent?

Although we'll probably never know, I'd be willing to bet that locking the phone so no features can be used unless it is activated was a requirement that AT&T placed on Apple and not the other way around. With Apple being so user-experience-centric, it doesn't make sense to assume that they would want to make the product useless or difficult to use without activation. That little idea is something that ALL of the cell phone companies enjoy using as a club to demonstrate their power to their customers. Look at how many features that Sprint and Verizon lock out of their users' phones in order to extract extra $$$ for various services...like Sprint locking BlueTooth file transfers so that you have to pay extra to transfer photos from a phone over their network to your PC.

If anyone deserves scorn, it's Apple. Why does using
widgets, music, video, and wi-fi internet access
functionality require phone activation from AT&T?

It's been about 4 hours for me and still no response. I had a pre-approved code from the ATandT store so that probably isn't what has slowed things down. This is rather embarrassing for Apple as many users aren't used to being treated like they don't exist. Beyond the initial iTunes message, I've had no communication at all. Perhaps an email explaining that the approval will take a while would be useful.

For those waiting for activation :

I called and spoke to a rep. I suggest you do the same. Turns out iTunes somehow sent the wrong calling plan to AT&T - one that the iPhone does not support. They said it will take at least 24hrs to resolve. :'(

I waited in line for 2 hours for nothing. If its not working tomorrow, I'm telling AT&T to stop and I'm returning my iPhone.

I am an existing account and still waiting after 7 hours to use my phone. It only took a few seconds to disable my old phone. Now I have no phone at all.

5 1/2 hours and still waiting...Have called once but so distasteful I shudder to think of calling again.

macbook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

I'm with the folks returning tomorrow if things aren't sorted. Personally I think that AT&T should absorb the 10% restock fee since it was their incompetence.

I think tomorrow and Sunday are going to be KEY for Apple and AT&T. If things don't smooth out by Monday, I would expect the returns to start to affect stocks. Nothing disastrous, but it'd definitely make for a number of newspaper tech "gurus" to claim that the iPhone was all hype and that was the reason for the returns.

I hope Jobs is ticked off, and I hope this goes into the decision of whether or not to keep the exclusivity to AT&T through 2012 or open the iPhone to other providers in 2009.

One last recommendation to Apple...

DON'T SELL A SIX HUNDRED DOLLAR PAPERWEIGHT. Every other cell phone on the market has all the options open even without activation. I know I can't make a call or get online until I activate, but I should at LEAST be able to upload all of my iTunes music and phone contacts. Bleh.

End rant. Now to sleep. Hope everyone else gets their issues sorted out.

Scott Bourne over at applephoneshow.com just posted that he was told to turn the iphone off and on. It worked. When it came back on it showed activated.

Can't hurt to try.

20" iMac Intel (Early 2006) Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I'm now at the 6 hour mark myself. AT&T swears this is because my number isn't ported (Sprint). I'm tired and severely disappointed. At least I only had to wait 2 hours. Guess I didn't have to cancel my plans tonight after all. Oh well, there will be other Friday nights.

To all of you who said that this is to be expected and we should be patient: I'm sorry; new product or not, I buy Apple products because I expect this to work. I don't care if the problem is Apple's or AT&Ts. All I know is that my APPLE iPhone isn't getting activated by my APPLE iTunes. I work in software development, and fully blame AT&T, but if Joe Consumer is having these problems tonight, Apple loses some cred. I met quite a few non fan-boys in the line tonight...

I don't know about how the "big" professionals do it, but I know I don't release software to production without "best guess" load testing :P

Good luck AT&T engineers. You win this round... On a positive note, I've taken the last 3 hours to get all my contacts added to Address Book 🙂

Just wanted to chime in too and make my peace b4 i got to bed. I am ******, waited all day for this phone just to see the emergency screen for the past 4 hours. I am porting my # from Sprint. I tried calling AT&T to just F**k it and give me a new number just so I could at least get into the phone to play with the features. No excuse to have the phone locked out of all the features!! I don't even care if my phone works at this hour. I just want to use the **** thing and experience the interface. Thanks Apple for creating this great phone, bad choice to partner up with these IDIOTS @ AT&T! GOOD JOB!

I called again and am now being told "The iPhone takes 24hrs to activate", despite that their own email says it should make calls but not receive. The rep did not elaborate on the technical glitch one rep informed me of earlier.

AT&T obviously F'd up this thing and I hope Steve Jobs personally screams at them tomorrow morning.

After a week with a new MacBookPro that is kernal panicking all the time... I was was thinking they were busy with making this iPhonie thing work correctly. I guess not. Not a good start.

No I'm very upset, I have been wawiting for an email for my activation for 5 hours now...this is ridiculous. I don't even care about the ** phone feature anyways and yet I can't use any of the other iPhone features until AT&T activates this. I wish I had never opened the box that way I caould get my money back without the $50 re-stock fee.

I get the feeling this is affecting the west coast people...by the time we got ours, AT&T was slammed and shutting down. 😟