Oh don't bet your house on that statement. Everyone in my office (and most aren't "geeks") who had an iphone/mac was waiting for the update. By 2PM they were all running it. Including me.
Everyone was eager to get it. And I agree with the OP, Apple dropped the ball. Again.
I remember the MobieMe chaos.
I understand there were delays, but I got a ton of updates yesterday that I really needed (iOS developer) and they all worked well together.
It took 4 hours on Weds night to get myiPhone update. It only took 30 minutes the following morning for my iPad. I'd say the worst is probably over by now.
Do you? It took months to get it operating at any kind of reasonable scale. The early-Wednesday upgrade stampede was resolved in a small positive number of hours which is why it's the "early-Wednesday upgrade stampede" and not an ongoing activation boondoggle.
I'm not really seeing the similarity between these two events. Yes, in a perfect world every newly launched service would immediately scale infinitely to meet overwhelming initial demand, and Apple didn't meet that bar. And yes, the error code situation can and should be made a hell of a lot clearer.
But I'm surprised that people don't think Apple has gotten a hell of a lot better at these things.