Apple fails first test under Tim Cook with iOS5 Update debacle.
So, this is how it’s gonna go with Tim Cook in charge. Apple released iOS5 early in the afternoon Wednesday to just watch it’s update servers screech to a halt within an hour. Okay, they didn’t crash, but they are slower than molasses and you might get lucky and get through to actually do the update after 10 to 20 tries. Twitter and Google+ are afloat with posts about the different errors people are getting, starting with the 3200 unknown or internal error. The next favorite is the unable to contact the Update Servers error, which is the reason behind the 3000 level errors if you take the time to read the Apple documentation online.
Add to all this that some people are reporting that their apps are being deleted and the wait of over an hour to download the update, only to have it fail after the excruciatingly long backup of your current iOS device. I’ve given up after 10 tries for the day. I will try again at midnight and again very early in the morning when I wake up to see if i hit an off peak time. But, the problem still happened and Apple was unprepared.
They failed to predict or even plan for this amount of traffic. That is a mortal flaw in the IT business, especially for the worlds largest company. This is something you need to understand, the iDevices are not just a niche gadget. They are mainstream leaders in the industry. Millions, upon millions of people own them, and you are not prepared for overflow? The signal this sends to the public is that the passing of Steve Jobs is more than a sad thing, it could be a mortal blow to Apple.There have been a lot of doom and gloom writers, bloggers and money managers for the last few years that it was hard to ignore. This was the perfect opportunity to prove them wrong, but instead you reinforce what they have been saying.
You can’t get back that first impression and Tim Cook, you screwed the pooch with your first big event out of the box.
Update: 11:01pm Wednesday 10/12 and I now have iOS5. It took 12 tries, and after the initial DL of the iOS that took less than an hour it took the update 1 1/2 hours to completely finish the update. It does look nice and I can’t wait to play with it.
from Ray Ebersole – Google+ Post Feed
https://plus.google.com/116971187524635952368/posts/cQ1LneomBWy
First of all, everyone had been warned that they shouldn’t insist on upgrading on the first day if it didn’t work the first couple of times or more. Second of all, nobody’s servers can possibly handle better what Apple’s servers eventually managed. Also, Apple isn’t set up like YouTube or Netflix for multicasting/broadcasting 700 Megs+ update stream to millions of users at the same time. That requires expensive special hardware to be installed that Apple would have used one time. That’s why they made iOS5 able to upgrade incrementally. When you’re not sure of something and when that something seems kind of hard to believe, always try to find out why it’s like that before you start telling people that the cause is Tim Cook or some other “incompetent” people.
Apple is the largest company in the world, going back and forth with Exxon/Mobil. They have the money and the ability way above YouTube or NetFlix. They knew that this would be the day that everyone was waiting for and really, no reasonable person is going to expect the general public to wait. They hyped this day, they sold out of Pre-orders on the 4S, so you would think they would be prepared for this. It is only smart business to be prepared.
I never called anyone at Apple incompetent, you used that word. The whole point that I made was that this is a big company, that just lost a leader that everyone has been saying was the company. No matter what, you over prepare for an event of this type. It’s common sense.
FYI, I work in the tech field for a school district. We never roll anything out without first testing, then piloting, then a bigger test and then a complete infrastructure test with multiple schools. You need to be prepared, we don’t want the students to not be able to do a test because we didn’t test the infrastructure.
Tim Cook should have known better, but unfortunately he didn’t.