I should have realized it was too good to be true.
I was second on line to buy a 3G iPhone at a small AT&T store in downtown San Francisco, so I breezed in promptly at 8 am local time and picked up a black 16GB iPhone. It took the sales rep 15 minutes to figure out how to put my phone number on the SIM (I suspended the account on my 3+-year-old Treo 650 a month or two ago), but by 8:30 am I was headed to PC World's offices, expecting to complete my activation via iTunes in a few minutes at my desk.
Yeah, right. I hooked up the USB cable, fired up iTunes, got a notice saying I had to upgrade to a new version. This took about 5 minutes, and I tried again. The new version obediently popped up an iPhone icon in the left nav bar; the main pane went white with the word "iPhone" in big grey letters in the middle, and on top a little horizontal barbershop pole says iTunes is accessing the iTunes store.
Then, the bad news: A pop-up window says "We could not complete your iTunes Store request. The network connection timed out. Make sure your network settings are correct and your network connection is active, then try again."
I clicked on OK, disconnected the cable, reconnected, and went through the same drill. Over and over again for more than an hour. What a disappointment!
I love it.....Apple is Great at creating an innovative, cool looking product, but again drops the ball on working with the carriers and existing activation plans to make sure the masses can get up and running.
This is exactly why I still do not even want to touch the iphone.
Having the same problem. another person in my office was at AT&T this morning and was one of the lucky people that was sent home to acitivate his new Iphone. when he got home. he 1st had to update Itunes. then started getting the same message that eveyone else is geeting.
the plus for him is that he was switching from Verzion to AT&T and his old phone has been deactivated.
Going to be a long weekend!