How To Monumentally Fuck Up A Product Launch

It’s been a busy week for Apple, what with launching a new iPhone in newly marketed territories of Euro land, releasing Software goodies for all and bringing up their neatly bundled web service that ties into all of these. Things got awry towards the end and looking back it’s no wonder why, shit happens when you don’t plan ahead.

We all remember last year when thousands awaited the iPhone’s way over casually late launch of 6 PM because and those activation woes that struck down any hopes had of doing more than fondle a newly bought iPhone. Thanks in part to the magic of time zones, not every iPhone was being activated but it was still enough to knock down Apple and AT&T’s authorization servers. A year later surely Apple would learn from their mistakes considering launch day this time around includes more than AT&T and a lot more foreign land. Instead we were treated to a magnificent spectacle of a failure, customers were turned away and told to activate their iPhones at home despite the massive scolding we got from every carrier partnered with Apple on how bad it would be if our precious little purchases escaped their finger tips sans a 2 year contract and in store authorization.

Despite all of this Apple fucked up another launch just as important. .Mac, Apple’s online suit of shit faced and over priced Internet oriented Apps which have long been lauded as being the scourge of paid web based Apps considering much of the functionality could be achieved for free or very damn close to it. The cries of joy when Apple revamped .Mac after setting it straight and putting it’s shit in order practically compelled us to open our wallets willingly and throw a hundred dollars at this newborn baby of a product without a second thought. Days we waited with nary a response and just about a week later all services were considered fully operational barging over the 6-12 hours originally estimated by Apple. In the end Apple made nice by offering current subscribers who boarded the Mobile Me ship a free month tacked on to the full year they forked a Benjamin over for. Unfortunately iDisk sharing and Mail (as of now) is down which means that extra 10 Gigs of storage is left completely useless for the time being.

Finally the coupe de grace, Apple dropping the ball on Firmware 2.0 for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It was initially leaked the day before and a few lucky ones managed to work their way around iTunes cryptic file structure and managed to get a crack at activating their newly installed Software before the giant clusterfuck that consisted of every new iPhone purchaser trying to slip through and get their phone online brought Apple’s servers down to it’s knees faster than an entourage of models in room with Hugh Hefner. Where did that leave hundreds of thousands of both current and new generation iPhone owners? With a very shiny brick for a day because the team at Apple came to the logical resolution of launching every Web Based service they had close to the same day of the iPhone 3G’s debut and routing that much more traffic through servers that couldn’t bear the weight.

Note to Apple, the gesture may be nice but if you give yourselves a little breathing room when tossing at us new and exciting products that have any chance of stalling up due to a massive influx of traffic, you’ll tend to find things go a lot smoother