iPhone 4 is shipping, and other Apple mayhem

The new smartphones probably shouldn't arrive until June 24, the iPhone 4 official launch day

Less than a week after a torrent of iPhone 4-hungry customers stormed the online Apple Store and AT&T stores to pre-order the newest smartphone in the series, the device has started shipping.

Judging by previous Apple pre-orders, customers shouldn't expect to receive their new tech toys earlier than June 24, the official launch day of the iPhone 4.

By the end of June 15, Apple and its retail partners had processed over 600,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 4, the largest number of pre-orders Apple says it ever took in a single day. The unprecedented first day of sales led to what Apple put mildly as "many order and approval system malfunctions."

As it turns out, order malfunctions weren't the worst effects of the Web site assault. Numerous customers also reported cases of mistaken or mismatched identities, possibly the result of an overloaded "session ID" system. (This isn't the first time we've seen personal information leaked through security flaws on an Apple/AT&T Web service.)

For the diehard iPhone fans who care more about receiving their new magical device in the mail than about their online privacy, the news gets even worse. Some customers with previously confirmed pre-orders have sent in screenshots of emails from both Apple and AT&T alerting them that their orders have been canceled. At this point, the cancellations seem entirely random.

All in all, it looks like Apple won't have much breathing time to celebrate the early incredible success of the iPhone 4 since the company will likely need to work tirelessly with AT&T over the next week or so to sort out pre-orders gone awry.