Day two, as far as I know we now have 2 successful activations out of 8.

The newly successful activation was blocked from doing anything last night and so was essentially a first try this morning. The rest of us who tried early seem to be locked in some sort of iPhone activation queue of doom.

News of the activation problems is spreading:

• This Digg thread, AT&T Activation Clumsiness hurts iPhone, says nothing, but it will have a zillion diggs by lunch. If things don’t get better the entire Digg top ten will be iPhone woes.
• Tuaw: While some sit in raptured bliss, others await activation
• Massive thread on MacRumors forums: iPhone Activation Issues
• Engadget: iPhone activations hosed until morning?
• Plenty more here: iphone activation – Google Blog Search
• Apple support is lit up: Apple – Support – Discussions – Phone

I’m trying to figure out who this is worst for. I’m thinking AT&T, who should be spinning furiously about how the activation problems are the fault of other carriers, the number transfer system or whatever. Their market value is going to get hammered on Monday. Have fun with the brand rebuilding since you’re going to be fondly known as the POS that kept us from using our new iPhones.

I just called the iPhone Activation Line, 877-800-3701, got a recorded message and disconnected. Nice. Also tried 877-419-4500 which put me on hold, I’ll try calling again later.

It is sort of funny how the communal joy of this experience has turned into communal frustration for so many. No, it’s not really funny at all. I want this very expensive, beautiful and fully useless thing to start working.

One of the first things I tried on Michelle’s iPhone was to use Safari to access the local file system. No dice, urls like file:/// yield this:

Getting iPhones turned out to be pretty easy. I got to the Soho Apple store at 4:30pm, the line was about a fifth of a mile, stretching almost all the way around the block, up Greene St, across Houston and back down Mercer St. But Apple was ready, they’d cleared almost the entire line in 45 minutes. Two friends walked into the 5th Avenue store after 8 and walked out with iPhones in less than 15 minutes. The AT&T stores were slower, I walked by the line outside the AT&T store on Broadway at Astor and there were still nearly a hundred people lined up on the sidewalk. Walking home was somewhat nerve-wracking. The special iPhone bag just screamed “mug me.”

What has turned out to be difficult is getting the phone activated. I’m pressing publish on this post nearly six hours after first attempting to activate. Michelle’s iPhone somehow activated right away, and it is truely amazing — totally exceeding my hype-inflated expectations. However, counting six other friends and co-workers who got iPhones tonight, Michelle is the only one who lucked out and got hers to work, all the rest of us are still waiting on activation. One for eight. That’s beyond lousy.

At this point I’m too tired to be angry. I’m really disappointed that AT&T wasn’t more on the ball with this. I’m upset that Apple locks out all functionality prior to activation. I’m not the slightest bit surprised that Verizon probably had something to do with borking this up.

AT&T’s phone support people are somehow remaining chipper and polite despite an inevitable deluge of iPhone support requests. The last person I spoke with finally admitted that the transfer system was overwhelmed and it was going to be a while. Overall they’ve been a pleasure to talk to, even if they haven’t been able to help at all.

The question arises: Would we have been happier had we been unable to buy iPhones, rather than having iPhones which we’re unable to use. I’m leaning towards the first.