Apple announced today that they sold around 600K units ysday what turned out the be the biggest pre-order day in the history of Apple and AT&T. Can you imagine what will happen on the 24th when it goes on sale around the world. We are looking at 2-3 million units sold. While AT&T’s backend had some issues, it clearly demonstrates the appeal of the device and the brand.

Lot of critics ignore Apple’s success. Some say, they are just catching up on features. What people miss is that Apple is not trying to get any specific feature out in the market first, rather is focused on getting it right first. So, it doesn’t matter if visual voice mail or video conferencing have been around for years, can they be made simple enough for people to actually use it on large scale basis.

Companies should learn from what Apple does right rather than get consumed by envy or hate.

As for the complete collapse of the order system, while it is a good problem to have, it is certainly inexcusable. AT&T/Apple should have been ready for it. Or there is more to the story than a mere traffic spike, we just don’t know. In the end, Apple made close to $300M and AT&T probably added 200K new subs and upgraded the rest – not a bad day of work.