Some call today by its true name, Friday July 11th while others are treating it as an official holiday celebrating the release of the iPhone G3. Unfortunately the custom of this holiday involves waking up early, standing in long lines, and spending a wad of cash (okay so that's no too different from many other holidays).

Here's the bad news for many early adopters: A spokesman for AT&T Inc., the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S., said there was a global problem with Apple Inc 's iTunes servers that prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store, as had been initially planned.

Instead, employees are telling buyers to go home and perform the last step by connecting their phones to their own computers. When the first iPhone went on sale a year ago, customers performed the whole activation procedure at home, freeing store employees to focus on sales. But the new model is subsidized by carriers, as is standard in the wireless industry, and Apple and AT&T therefore planned to activate all phones in-store to get customers committed to a contract.