Apple Store or ATT

I've asked a few people where is the best place to buy my first iphone. I assumed that an Apple Store would have the genius' and sales staff to get me all set up with the phone and answer any and all questions.
So far everyone tells me to go to an ATT store and buy it there. Because I would get all that info and more from them.
Which is it?
Thanks

It depends what store experience you want.
Apple Store, it will most likely be packed and you will barely be able to move around without bumping into someone. It will also be loud and you probably won't be able to get close to the demo units because every table will be full of people. You won't be able to look at many accessories because the shelves will have large crowds people just standing in the way while they look at all of the 100 different things and see how they fit on their device. Because the store is always so crowded there could be a special iPhone line outside the store where you could wait for a pretty long time just to talk to someone about it.
AT&T Store, there might be 10-20 people in the store and less is more likely. The AT&T rep will give you a big sheet with all the iPhone plan options that you can go down and check off. Once your done with that they will enter it all into the computer and activate your iPhone. About 10-15 minutes after you walk in the door you will walk out with your iPhone working. (depending on the wait)
Also note if there is some problem on the AT&T side of things and you go the Apple Store they will tell you to go to an AT&T Store to solve that problem. I went with friends while they got their iPhones 3 times to 2 different Apple stores and each time it took over an hour. When I got my iPhone at an AT&T store 4 days after it's release it took 15 minutes, I know other people who have had the same experience at AT&T stores, or went to an Apple store only to be told to go to AT&T instead because of something with their account that Apple could not do.

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Apple Store vs ATT Store to buy?

Is one better than the other? I have a feeling that if a stock phone failed, the Apple store might be a better place to take it back to (replacement on the spot?) Does it really matter?

Doesn't matter where you buy it.
However, if you have a problem, you can only take it to an Apple store.

Corp discount (FAN) customers and Apple Store upgrades?

Last year, for some reason anyone who had a corporate discount (FAN #) on their account could not upgrade at the Apple Store and had to do it through AT&T. I have not heard about any silly restrictions this year. Has anyone heard anything official?

Yes I'm having an issue trying to get a new 3Gs. The Apple store will only sell it at full price. When I called ATT (such dorks) they were an able to remove my FAN the account association which was blocking the purchase at the subsidized price. The apple store called ATT and after a half hour said I would have to try at the ATT store. Why I can't simply remove the FAN discount myself on their site I have no idea.

I have an ATT corporate account. Can I get a phone at the Apple store?

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You can not get an iPhone at Apple with a corporate account. You have to go to an ATT store to do that. Also- your data is going to cost 45 dollars instead of 30 dollars with a corporate account.
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“Could Not Activate EDGE” error message Update ...
Well it’s going on day 6 and still sporadic to no EDGE on my iPhone. At one time, it was thought to be a defective iPhone – since my partner’s iPhone works just fine.
After over three hours on the land line with AT&T and Apple, I was sent to the local Apple store for a replacement. Of course, as soon as I walked into the Apple store my iPhone worked just fine. ;-( The local store replaced my iPhone and suggested I go home and activate the phone as a NEW iPhone, that way if there was a bug in my data it would not carry over to the new phone. Did that and well… still sporadic to no EDGE. By the way, I have the Big White “E” to the right of the 5 bars and AT&T .
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When I’m next to my partner, trying to access the same feature, his iPhone is just so fast. Mine hangs up, draws out and finally I get the error message, “Could Not Activate EDGE”. I am updated to version “1.1.4(4A102)”. New (refurbished) iPhone direct from Apple.
I remember reading a while back about some problems others had when they upgraded to from 1.1.3 to 1.1.4. I never had those problems, but it sure looks like they may have started. Does anyone remember what the problems with 1.1.4 were, what was done if anything to correct them, and best of all any suggestions?
By the way, this is Seattle, not some small – out of the way place where connection and signal strength is expected to be second rate. Also, I had full function of my iPhone from the day I bought it in June 2007, all the way up to Thursday March 20, at 2120.
Thanks
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The tech specs are identical from both wesites of Vietnam and USA--To add further confusion!
Apple Vietnam
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CDMA model A1429*: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE** (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25)
GSM model A1429*: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE** (Bands 1, 3, 5)
802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz and 5GHz)
Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology
Apple USA
GSM model A1428*: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 4 and 17)
CDMA model A1429*: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25)
GSM model A1429*: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5)
802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz and 5GHz)
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I bought att-locked but contract-free iPhone 4 from the Apple Store in the mall

Over 9 months ago i bought att-locked but contract-free iPhone 4 from the Apple Store in the mall.
Now i live in Costa Rica so my question is can it be unlocked?

You CANNOT legitmately unlock the AT&T iphone at all.
AT&T does NOT unlocl any iphones at all.
They clearly state this on their website.
"iPhone cannot be unlocked, even if you are out of contract."
http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB82027&cv=820#fbid=bQwQp9j4ANP

I have an iphone 4s unlocked with att prepaid plan (non-contract), everything was working perfect BUT since i update to IOS6 i can not send MMS to anybody has Android, i went to att technical center they said only apple store can fix the problem, i went..

I have an iphone 4s unlocked with att prepaid plan (non-contract), everything was working perfect BUT since i update to IOS6 i can not send MMS to anybody has Android, i went to att technical center they said only apple store can fix the problem, i went to Apple store MANY times they could not fix it, so they gave me a new iphone 4s and they said they fixed it but they did not,iam so mad that's not fair, can somebody help me please.

The nice thing about owning this overpriced POS is that Apple not only doesn't support it, but also doesn't want to hear about anything negative regarding it. So I spoke to the so-called "support" people at Apple who successfully screwed up my contacts beyond repair. I got a nice email from Apple asking me to rate the support I got. I was actually civil and described the issue tactfully. What do I get in return? Nothing. Not a damned thing!! You're luck you've got me by the short hairs on a 2 year contract but I'm still tempted to throw this POS through the front window of the nearest Apple store!! Not only will I be replacing this phone with a competitive product but I won't be buying anymore Apple crap. I guess when you con 27 million people into believing your rhetoric and sales lies, you don't have to care whether some customers get screwed or not. I'll be going back to Verizon and threatening legal action if they don't take this electronic dung heap back but I'm sure the teams of lawyers Apple and Verizon have on staff have insured that I have no rights in this matter and you're free to screw me anytime you please. Sad. I used to love Apple as a company and your products. Now you're just another Microsoft with more trendy looking junk. I've had it with you. If any of your executives are brave enough to talk to me, please contact me at your convenience.

I bought ipad air wifi cellular with att at apple store, and am going to take it to Egypt. Do I need to unlock it from att? Will it work in other countries?

I bought ipad air wifi cellular with att at apple store, and am going to take it to Egypt. Do I need to unlock it from att? Will it work in other countries?

There are many people using the basic (i5) 2012 MacMini and even older ones to edit complex films in FCP X so you should have no problems.
I have been using FCP 7 and FCP X since they came out on my 2008 iMac Core 2 Duo and am thinking of getting the same model as you rather than pay the astronomic price for a new 27" iMac.
The performance won't be quite as fast but it will be at least 4 times faster at rendering than my old iMac.

How do I purchase multiple iphones from Apple store

I wish to purchase, online, 4 iPhones for myself and family next week. I do not currently have service with ATT. On Apple's site, I am able to select the appropriate family ATT plan, and I can give them ONE existing phone number which I want to transfer from my existing Verizon account, to ATT. There is no way however, to input the telephone numbers of the other 3 phones which I wish to transfer. I was told, by Apple, to individually add the 3 other phones, to my new account, to complete the transaction, online. When I do this, it acknowledges that I wish to add 3 lines, but there is no way to indicate that these phones are being transferred, from Verizon, nor do they ask for the phone numbers. I do not want to get to the store on 12/26 to find out that the paperwork has not been completed. I would greatly appreciate hearing from anyone who has transferred multiple lines to ATT, from Apple's site, and gone to the store to pick up multiple iPhones at one time. Am I doing this correctly?

The actual activation for an iPhone 3G is done at the store when the iPhone is purchased - at an Apple store, at an AT&T store, at a Best Buy store, and soon to be at a Walmart store.
You can get credit approval in advance from AT&T that is good for 30 days I believe. A credit approval number is provided by AT&T to provide the store at the time of purchase. When I switched to AT&T from Verizon before the original iPhone was released, I did everything online and the entire process took minutes. Even if you don't get credit approval from AT&T in advance, as long as you have good credit standing, you shouldn't have any problems with the paperwork at an Apple store as part of the activation process.
Message was edited by: Allan Sampson

A happy story for a change: upgrading to 3GS at an Apple Store

Just wanted to share my recent upgrade experience which went very smooth. My wife and I went to the Apple Store at The Grove, which is one of the bigger stores in L.A. We were upgrading from the original 2G Edge models and I had already signed up online. They had a roped off area out front for the iPhone line, which was only about 6 people long when we got there. The orange shirt folks kept things moving and were very nice, even offering umbrellas to shield us from the sun. Blue shirts came out to collect us one by one, "ushering" people inside for the sale. It's silly, but there's something fun about having a personal 'shopping valet', especially for a phone. When our turn came we actually got NELSON, who is the guy in the Guided Tour online (didn't realize it until later). He was very nice and helpful, and most importantly: patient. The guy must have activated over a hundred iPhones in the last few days but we were treated like we were the first.
Purchasing and activation was very smooth. We logged in to our AT&T account and verified our info, signed a couple items on their handheld device, then plugged in each iPhone to activate it through iTunes. I was able to sync mine with MobileMe right away, so I had all my info. My wife had to wait until we got home to sync with her Mac but that process went smoothly and she simply restored from a backup of her previous iPhone and all was well (she was jealous of MM so I guess we're getting the family plan now). One caveat is that because we had a family plan for the iPhones, they were both under my name in the system. So each time we had to enter my name and SS#, but with a different phone #; that's one reason we had to come in to upgrade in person. Also, FYI to anyone in California: the new sales tax (9.75%!) applies to the UNSUBSIDIZED price of the iPhone, meaning you're taxed on $599 and not $199. So buyer beware, it's more expensive than you think it's gonna be.
Overall, the whole process was extremely smooth and only took about 12 minutes for two activations. No glitches. Nelson was great, as was the whole staff in a very crowded store. I do appreciate that Apple has put a lot of effort into making the shopping experience easy and pleasant, and it's light-years ahead of the customer service at other electronics stores. Nice job

I just plugged the old phone into my daughters mac, clicked restore, and set it up with her media. I took it the the ATT store; they replaced the SIM card and did whatever they had to do to reactivate it under her phone number. I had to add the $30 data plan to her number and I had to set up the visual voice mail. No problem other than the extra trip, apparently the apple store couldn't transfer the number.

New AT&T Upgrade Eligibility Update (Apple Stores Not Aware???) *Important*

This is the link to AT&T official update release:
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=1574
I went to my local AT&T store and informed them about this, and the person that took care of me didn't know about it, she was like "No, you gotta wait till 7/13/09 (My case) so that you will be eligible to upgrade to the iPhone 3G S, or you can do the Early Upgrade which is $200 more for both models(16 and 32 GBs)", but than I said that AT&T release this to those that will be eligible in the next three upcoming months so they can pay $199 for 16GBs and $299 for 32GBs, the guy that was next to her that was there was the only one aware of this update, so I kind of understand why is it that Apple doesn't know anything about this (since I called 2 retail stores and they didn't know anything neither main Headquarters) but I would like for someone in Apple to take a look at this and see what's going on, because where I live iPhones 3G S are in back order in the AT&T stores and since I gotta upgrade, my best bet it's going to AT&T, but I could purchase it at the Apple store because they do have in stock here, but than I checked in Apple's website, whenever I'm going to buy it it says that I gotta pay $399 for the 16GBs because I'm not eligible till 7/13/09 and again Apple does NOT know anything about this Upgrade Eligibility Update so they will charge me more, at the end I'm gonna have to wait till AT&T gets some iPhones 3G S and buy it there, but what ****** me off is that they have it in the retail store here
Please any info on this!!!

Yes, and I said that I was eligible in 7/13/09 and yes I'm part of the family plan, I do spend more than $99 and I already went to the AT&T store and the lady that took care of me in AT&T didn't know this, just one guy in there that was an employee like her knew about it, so even AT&T employees do not know this(Must of them) now, in the AT&T stores near me the Phone 3G S is not available since they ran out, but the Apple stores near me they do have it so I checked with Apple and they do not know anything about this, even the main Headquarters, and when I go buy it they are going to charge me $399 for the 16GBs iPhone 3Gs so I guess I'm gonna have to wait for AT&T to have it in the store near me, which *****, because I'm gonna have to wait, when in the Apple store they have it.

IPad1 S/N and IMEI unknown at Apple Store, help?

I need your advice on an iPad1 that refuses to activate after a recent reset.
Background:
iPad was reset the other day, then hung on the activation, stating the activation servers were not responding. Kept trying assuming it was a problem with overloaded activation server. Took device to Apple Store Genius Bar, he was stumped. He searched for serial number and IMEI in his repair database, and it didn't find any records of those numbers. Doing a serial number search on the warranty check webpage results in normal output - that the purchase date is known and the device is out of warranty. Genius recommended I email SelfServe to ask a ticket be escalated to a group that could manually add the serial number to the update server.
I am going to do that, but I thought I would ask here first as the genius was just guessing.
Anyone see this issue before?
Thanks:
If it helps, here are the original numbers:
SN#: gb0430ldhp3
IMEI: 012326007209047

More followup, closer to solution.
Took iPad to Apple store to ask Genius to open incident for me, as I am unwilling to pay incident charge just to activate my working hardware.
Got to see the same Genius from other day, he decided to call Apple, talked with Software support, escalated to a supervisor.
Found out the device originally started out as a demo iPad for an ATT store. Something happened in their system recently to put the SN and IMEI into an inactive status - thereby not letting it access the iTunes store to activate. Currently I have an Apple ticket open so an engineer can re-enable the serial number.
Keep you posted.

I bought the company unlocked phone from apple store Canada. It was originally loaded with software 4.2 and was working fine here in SaudiArabia. Yesterday I updated with IOS 5.0.1. Now it is showing that sim is not valid. The same sim works in other p

I bought the company unlocked phone from apple store Canada. It was originally loaded with software 4.2 and was working fine here in SaudiArabia. Yesterday I updated with IOS 5.0.1. Now it is showing that sim is not valid. The same sim works fine in other phones.

Here's and update on my problems and here are are some screen shots of the types of problems I've been having since the v5.0.1 update. Keep in mind these are native apps and I have tried the rebuild phone crap many times, nothing helps.
This is screen shot of a what happened when I tried to use my camera one day, both the front and back cameras were all black. I had to power cycle the phone to get rid of this problem. The cameras appeared to be working correctly, I could focus and zoom but it was all black.
Here is an image of what happened when I searched for something in a map. This is after I picked the choice I wanted, the keyboard disappeared but the list didn't. I had to force close the app and restart it for this problem to go away. Who knew five bars on ATT was possible.
And finally this is the messaging app, although you would not know it. I had to return to home screen (after a long pause for it to process the button push) and return to the messaging app. This happens all the time with the messaging app and the notifications sounds drive me crazy. If i'm using the phone, say browsing the web and I get an incoming message its almost 100% of the time the messaging app will screw up. The sound will play at the wrong time or not at all, message will show up in notifications and diasapear in message app or Ill have a problem like this:

BUying the phone form the Apple store vs the phone store

Is there any advantage to buying the phone from the Apple store vs the ATT people? I found with my Treo the ATT folks don't know much about it and also didn't offer any insurance for it either!

There used to be a huge difference. AT&T would let you order, while  would make you come and stand in line. With the 3GS, Apple allowed pre-orders.
Now, there is no difference. If you are the only person on your account, it is pretty simple to set it up. If you have multiple cell phones on your accounts, it may be better to let ATT set it up to handle the complexity. (But either way, you can call AT&T 1-800 number to resolve any issues.)
Message was edited by: AppleMan1958

Apple Store or ATT

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