When writing about the troubles Apple had last week during their v2.0 launch, I reminded about some of the load challenges we had with the MCAT system under heavy volume, and, of all things, software patents. should point out that the The following is a brief post that I wrote last semester after giving a presentation on the Amazon One Click patent case in a class on Internet policy. It never quite made it up, so I am sharing it now.

(I should point out that the load issues I talk about here were resolved with a rather popular queuing system that we build for the MCAT registration system that managed load throughout the system. I loved that project, and a great lessons learned about performance services oriented architecture! Okay, enough geek talk – carry on…)

I got to work at 6:30 am the day after a class presentation on the Amazon “One Click” legal issue, and walked into what we loving call “the war room.” It is exactly what you would expect. Computers are everywhere, monitors, projectors, and a conference phone I am determined to paint red. This, however, was not a military operation, although pretending sometimes helps us do a better job. This was a launch day for the MCAT software. We were opening over 50,000 testing seats, and war or not, pre-med students fighting for their future always results in blood. (more…)

Last night was crazy. I expected a somewhat benign experience that would reward my annoyance with lines with a new shiny toy that, immediately upon opening, would never again live up to my expectations.¹ What I didn’t expect was the bizarre roller-coaster of emotions, and dare I say dramatic conclusion that would lend itself to a blog narrative such as this.

(If you prefer a visual narrative, check Flickr, or for a narrative limited to short 140 character updates, Twitter.)

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Footnotes:

1. There is actually an amazing philosopher who talks about this. I would highly recommend anyone who is disillusioned with consumerism’s promise read Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle“. I can’t recommend it enough!↩

Like many iPhone owners, I have looked forward to today with a lot of anticipation. I resisted the hype for a bit. I soon realized, however, that if I was rationalizing the purchase of a new iPhone under the thinly veiled guise of “one who studies technology and culture”, then who was I to deny myself of the full first day release experience?

I decided to go half way. I do, after all, have a job. I figured I would go after work, around dinner, and catch some of the spectacle (product and person based). In the meantime I would be satiating my techno-lust by updating my current phone to the new software and getting a feel for what my new and improved life will be like. Cut to me at work with a non-operational phone, sitting with a coworker, frantically trying to access the iTunes music store in order to reconnect to the digital world.

Earlier in the morning iTunes had offered to update my phone to v2.0, but I was running to a meeting and delayed the install. Post meeting I found my phone unwilling to admit that the today was the biggest launch in mobile history, adamently proclaiming that 1.1.4 was the most current version. Apparently my computer doesn’t read the same blogs I do. Nor does it understand my need for Monkey Ball. What to do? Restore the iPhone! (I promise, this seemed like a good idea. Forums are full of cases where older firmware updates wouldn’t take until users restored their phones from a backup.)

Well, apparently I wasn’t reading the right blogs. Crave reported (at about the time I restored) that the Apple has been overwhelmed, servers are down, customer service is swamped, and my scenario is far from unique. Then I ran across a post from my friend Chris who works for AT&T entitled “iUh Oh” (he explained things from his perspective here). The short of it is that I have no way to restore my phone while Apple servers are unavailable.

I am sure there is a LaTourian joke in here somewhere. One thing is clear. For the time being I own a brick that only asks me if I am experiencing an emergency (sure, I guess) while like a trained pigeon I repeatedly check to see if Apple servers have been restored. The bizarre saving grace? I know that this problem will go away as soon as I give this company a whole lot of money for my new phone.

UPDATE @ 3:53 PM EDT: I was able to connect to the Apple servers to restore my iPhone. No v2.0 software available yet, so for now my phone is going through the slow process of syncing everything back onto the device.

Additionally, Crave reported that “A reader added the text of a note he received from Apple in the comments. Apple blames the problem on ‘network congestion on the iTunes server,’ but says you should be able to update or restore the firmware once the traffic dies down.”

I have my own experience with super high volume traffic days (not here, of course… and I suppose it is silly to compare my professional work to Apple, but the point is…) and sometimes all you can do is just wait for the traffic to die down.

After a week in my new favorite city Chicago (move over Bangkok; check out pictures here and here, and videos here), I am playing that catch up game. My inbox is overflowing and the unread count on my Google Reader is making me question the darker side of RSS. One thing that didn’t change? Twitter. It is still down.

After endlessly defending Twitter to friends, and even giving Twitter kudos during their iPhone 2.0 related downtime, I am beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t be looking at other options.

The reason? No Instant Messenger tweeting. Even more frustrating than the intermittent inability to see who has replied to your tweets (the whole point, no?), the inability for me to submit tweets via IM is killing me. To top things off, my Facebook status/Twitter syncer of choice accesses the service via IM. I have no Facebook status!

I started tweeting via IM as to not add one more web2.0 obligation, but now the overhead of sharing trivial thought is less than trivial. Where does that leave me? Well, relentlessly checking the Twitter Status blog, which unfortunately seems to be as limited as Twitter’s 140 character tweets. It is a fate worse than… well, getting work done.

There is an interesting upside to the twitter-verse having some unexpected time on its hands. No, I am not talking about the temporary demise of Twitter-log Blog entries and repetitive stress thumb injuries. I am talking about a return to fan art! Right in the middle of an “I hate Twitter” fit, I ran across this:

Yes, this is a 3D creation of the twitter image I posted about a couple weeks ago. Apparertly the image was originally created by the Australian illustrator Yiying Lu. I had been pondering the meaning of the image, but Lu’s title of ‘Lifting up a Dreamer’ seems to suggest that Twitter is the whale, and that we are the tweeter struggling to lift it to greater heights. What do they dream about? An IPO? More servers? A t-shirt deal? Who knows, but it seems that even when it is down, people just can’t bring themselves to hate on Twitter.