I so wished that it might have been the new MacBook Pro 16, if only to throw some sand into the leakers rumours mill (no pun intended) ...
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Online Store Down Ahead of Apple Watch Series 7 Pre-Orders
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
They don’t care about you and your 200 shares of apple stock
Logged on to spend just over 3k on gear only to find out I can't because ... there's some minor upgrade to the apple watch coming.
This isn't cleaver marketing it's an egotistical corporate jerk off. I guess I'll log onto a third party reseller for my order (which i'm aware apple gets 95% of anyway) through gritted teeth lementing the fact apple have cornered the market for hardware in my industry.
This isn't cleaver marketing it's an egotistical corporate jerk off. I guess I'll log onto a third party reseller for my order (which i'm aware apple gets 95% of anyway) through gritted teeth lementing the fact apple have cornered the market for hardware in my industry.
Middle of the night in the USA is 8 am here in the UK... l suspect that part of the issue is coordinating the launch across time zones and also testing and preparing for a huge, initial rush of orders, which probably means bringing a bunch of spare capacity online. I can’t think of any other company that does internationally coordinated launches like this - or has such a high media profile as Apple. Imagine if someone tweeted that you could order early by going to the UK store, or that the Canadian store had fat-fingered the price at $39.99 or if the US store went down under the initial load... if you’re Apple, that’s front-page news in tomorrow’s papers and a class action lawsuit from punters who want their $40 Watch.
I’m inclined to think that Apple know what they are doing here. They can do the math on how many sales they lose by taking the store down for a few hours.
As for hype, they got a front-page story on MacRumors out of it, and people here are talking about the new Apple Watch - presumably also true across other Apple-watching sites. So that clearly works.
Pre-orders could be done separately from the main store. Apple makes tweaks to products at other times without taking the entire store down.
Right. You’re gonna need to set an alarm on that watch if you need to get out of bed at 5am
And . . . it's open!!
(but no comparison yet for the different watch models)
Available date for Watch 7 is October 15.
(but no comparison yet for the different watch models)
Available date for Watch 7 is October 15.
Heh...did they f-up? The only buy options seem to be for AW6, SE and AW3? There's a Learn more for the AW7, but....
Edit: Ah - took the buy option off the Series 7 page - have to enter through "Shop Watch". Meh.
Edit: Ah - took the buy option off the Series 7 page - have to enter through "Shop Watch". Meh.
Last edited:
Ok, show the full page splash screen. But how about add a button that takes you to the store so millions can buy other products?
I don't see why Apple can't show the Watch ad screen, then still allow people to order other things.
But they do the same thing when products are available on day 1 - pre-orders aren’t special, and minor tweaks to existing products aren’t front page international news.
I can only speculate *why* they do it, but the one explanation that is utterly implausible is that it hasn’t occurred to Apple to do it some other way, given that they inevitably lose some sales by taking the store down. I absolutely trust Apple to act in the best interest of their bottom line on matters like this (designing consistently good products is a bit harder).
So the math is obviously “Close down the store for a few hours maybe 3-4 times a year” vs. some technical advantage of having orders imultaneously start (& orders for the old versions stop) on the same date around the world. Or simply so they can coordinate spinning up a ton of extra servers ready for the spike (and people will probably want to order other stuff along with their new toy, so the spike won’t just be for ore-orders).
Also, if people come to the store wanting to buy a new lightning cable, it’s Apple’s job to make sure they impulse-buy a new watch while they have their card out... By making such people visiting just before the new shiny is online come back when it is available, Apple may win more than they lose.
I had no idea a new item was even being added to the store until I went to buy an accessory for my iPad only to see this stupid message. I ended up looking at other online stores instead.
Funny picture to me. What could be so interesting on the watch face to garner such enthusiasm and attention?
It can stay down for all I care. I ain't buying the Apple Watch 6.1
As a developer, I can assure you it's not their inability to build it to stay up, obviously - it's Apple. Instead, it's due to a couple reasons. Firstly, it's a way to kick everyone out of the relevant pages. This helps refresh users cache of the page, but more-so to prevent snipers, especially the ones who would setup bots to snipe large quantities. Secondly, this gives them control to roll out the the availability to different regions at different times, usually across 0~15minutes. Including randomly routing (of some percent) of the inbound traffic into the store while the rest is still kept at the gate. This helps reducing huge amounts of requests simultaneously, as well as keeping it fair.
You have to remember that the iPhone 12 for example sold 12 million units in the first 24 hours. These are immensely popular products and just opening the flood gates is a bit tricky. You have to make sure your servers can handle the traffic, having a smooth experience, all while keeping it fair for everyone.