Be Smart

Last Friday's iPhone 3G launch is being called a number of things, among the most clever "iPocolypse" as coined by Apple's own fan-boy Robert Scoble. My good friend Meg Fowler, proud owner of a non-iPhone, however, decidedly proclaimed her word-of-the-day as "iDidntGetScrewed." Meaning, most everyone racing to the software and hardware upgrades did get screwed. How can a brilliant company deliver such a bad experience? Are we just suckers to Steve Jobs to have not seen the debacle coming?

Pre-game Excitement
In anticipation of iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 upgrades, Apple launched the App Store, and the internet lit up with buzz, building excitement for the subsequent d-day upgrade and download. I spent the night among colleagues at new iPhone-focused startup. We wrapped breakfast gift bags to pass to the people waiting in line all night for first dibs and hacked into Apple's new App Store analyzing streams of background data. So, how did Apple screw its loving all-nighter-pulling, waiting in line for too long, doting, recession-spending user-base?

Poor Planning
Clearly, early adoption of new technology comes with the disclaimer of the imperfect; you pay a higher price and deal with growing pains. Last year's iPhone lines wrapped around city blocks and there was a lot of frustration two months later when Apple dropped the price by $200. I'd like to say iLearnedMyLesson when it comes to jumping on the Apple bandwagon, because the brilliant design company continues to storm when it comes to delivering this particular device smoothly. Apple's market strategy for large-scale adoption and its delivery is a failure on a grand scale.

Last year's sticker price $599 reduced the size of the user-base, the ability to activate outside of the store, and a simple proprietary software platform delivered a great launch day. How could Apple not have foreseen or planned for a business and tech crisis that will forever be called: iPocolyspe, iBrick, iFAIL.

Four Reasons Why Users Got Screwed

1. App Store release 24-hours to launch day

2. iPhone 2.0 software upgrades to iPhone & Touch on launch day