AT&T + Apple + iPhone 4 = fail

I'm a iPhone 3g customer. I've had my phone for almost 2 yrs now and it's showing its age.  It's become slower to load apps, surf the net and even has trouble connecting to gmail.

It was time to upgrade and I knew it. The phone even knew it.

Then Apple came out with the iPhone 4.

At the yearly Apple Developer's conference Steve showcased the new phone and its features and detailed the pre-order and release date.

*cue the angels singing*

With a pre-order date of June 15th set, I immediately updated my Outlook calendar to remind me (as if I could possibly dodge all of the press releases and somehow forget the date).  As the date approached, I worked out my strategy: I would log in first thing in the morning after arriving to work and pre-order without a problem.

I apparently forgot the fiasco of 2 years ago when I tried to do the same thing and the Apple site crashed in flames.

35 tries later, I had work to do and couldn't continue to take the 'sorry there was an error' message each time when I tried to complete the required step of checking my eligibility at AT&T.

Then I heard that they had sold out of the pre-order and delivered-by-june-24 phones at 1pm PST.  So I decided it was best to wait until the 16th to try again.

I logged in about 7:30am on the morning of June 16th and once on the Apple.com/iphone4 page, I was greeted with the subtext of "Sorry we sold out yesterday, but pre-order your phone now and you can get it by July 6th". I figured a week or so later wasn't that bad and went for it. This time the process went smoothly and in less than 5 minutes I had my iPhone 4 ordered and charged to my credit card.

I perdiodically googled 'iphone 4' yesterday and read articles about how the Apple and AT&T sites crashed on the 15th and didn't allow most people to pre-order a phone.

Today, I see this:
http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2010/jun/17/att-suspend-pre-order-sales-iphone-4/

So they are suspending the pre-sales now for lack of supply?  Interesting. And they say the AT&T site got more hits from people trying to check their eligibility? You don't say...

From a usability standpoint, I find this whole thing hard to understand.

First, if you require each pre-order customer to determine their eligibility by including as a required step, don't you think that those servers should be shored up?

Second, taking into consideration the huge desire of a consumerist population to 'keep up with the Joneses', what made you (i.e.Apple & AT&T) think there wouldn't be a large demand for this phone? Add to that the historical data you have from the past 3 roll outs and I'm sure you could have estimated a pre-order amount far closer to what you obviously prepared for.

Third, as a consumer/user of the Apple site, I saw no way to alternatively order a phone. I read later you could pre-order at a Best Buy, AT&T store and possibly other retailers. This information was absent from the Apple page. It would have been great to see a list of 'you might want to check out these places/stores' when I got the error message telling me that my pre-order couldn't be completed.


I don't really expect Apple or AT&T to change anything come next June when the new iPhone is debuted, seeing how the scarcity of a product exponentially increases the 'want' of the product but I do think it warrants at least a cursory usability study to see if you can optimize the process for next time.