I'm disappointed that our audience here at BBR is more interested in debating Apple/the iPhone instead of discussing the technical details of what happened here. Perhaps I'm the only visitor still interested in the technology and connectivity which makes all of this possible. Anyway, doesn't Apple power all of their web services via Akamai's EdgeSuite platform? It looks like that would be able to handle the load of serving up all those static firmware files. Of course, I guess it's the registration and account management that takes a bit more server-side processing. There is definitely a bottle-neck somewhere.
Well it would be interesting to talk about the technology but there are so few that actually understand the technology. For example how akamai actually does the serving and how the files were actually seeded over multiple servers. It is great to talk about but the fact that people like you think it can actually handle the load, shows the lack of understanding of the systems, so why bother? I mean the fact that it is not just the firmware but the actual transaction processing at AT&T for account generation that was the problem, along with those migrating phone numbers who could not get the "pic" executed properly...see it wasn't just a firmware issue but a complete system issue from firmware, to registration, to billing, to number migration...ohhh well...