Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What are you talking about? The "new" site content isn't being created in the next 6 hours. All that stuff is sitting on a staging ser

all that stuff is 99% likely done and sitting on a dev server waiting to get pushed live.

Dude, never underestimate just how clunky / backward and broken things are behind the scenes.
 
6 hours. I'm sure Apple has an army of people who manage the website. 2 products. The changes are probably already on a staging or dev server and all they'd need to do is push the new pages out.
Give them a break. They are not....lets just say they slow.
 
Not really free, every minute the store is down they are losing on sales.
I dont think they are losing money during the downtime either. People who are going to buy online will wait for 6 hours and buy it online after the site is up again anyways.
[doublepost=1490377302][/doublepost]
He is right in that the advertising is free. And you are right in sales lost every minute the store is down. Sounds like a wash to me.
I dont think they are losing money during the downtime either. People who are going to buy online will wait for 6 hours and buy it online after the site is up again anyways.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Demo Kit
I dont think they are losing money during the downtime either. People who are going to buy online will wait for 6 hours and buy it online after the site is up again anyways.
[doublepost=1490377302][/doublepost]
I dont think they are losing money during the downtime either. People who are going to buy online will wait for 6 hours and buy it online after the site is up again anyways.

Not everybody is a hardcore Apple fan, most people are casual tech purchasers... I'm sure there are a lot of people that need a laptop or a phone and if they aren't able to purchase one from Apple, will just as quickly change their mind and go get a windows laptop or a Samsung phone. And there are those who are on the fence and something like your store being down for hours is enough to push them in the other direction. the point is that you cannot predict that people are going to come back after 6 hours in metrics, you just see a gap of time where the store made $0 and that means they lost money and it was not free.
 
they forgot to remove the mac pro
Well..they gotta sell their leftovers
[doublepost=1490377913][/doublepost]
These outages are probably a smoke screen for something more serious going on in the store. Probably they got hacked and are doing a restore to purge the flaw and patch it.
Maybe Apple is holding back products on purpose and using these so called updates as a means to hide what they are really doing.
So when there is a really big hack Apple will introduce a new 2017 Mac Mini and take the store down for a week.
Probably online robbery hahah
 
  • Like
Reactions: Demo Kit
Not everybody is a hardcore Apple fan, most people are casual tech purchasers... I'm sure there are a lot of people that need a laptop or a phone and if they aren't able to purchase one from Apple, will just as quickly change their mind and go get a windows laptop or a Samsung phone. And there are those who are on the fence and something like your store being down for hours is enough to push them in the other direction. the point is that you cannot predict that people are going to come back after 6 hours in metrics, you just see a gap of time where the store made $0 and that means they lost money and it was not free.
I beg to differ. If someone wants a Mac or an iPhone and if they cant get it from Apple website, they will either wait for 6 hours or buy it from one of the many resellers. No reason to buy a product you dont really want just because you cannot buy it online from Apple store in the next 6 hours. In both cases, Apple is going to sell its stuff. Also, in all likelihood, looking at the time Apple normally closes its online store, if you order something right now or after 6 hours, it will get delivered the same time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: navaira
"Will people finally buy the 8 Mac Pros we have left?????? How long do we have to wait to finally remove them from our website?!"
Apple is very annoyed by not being able to sell all of it to make a new update on their website. Lol. That aside, they could just update it regardless of their current supply.
 
Amazon are about to take they entire website down.

Apparently they have 3 new light bulbs, 2 speakers and 1 printer they need to add.

Jeez Apple, why are you so useless as a tech company?

Then buy an Amazon Fire phone if they are so good at tech.
 
Lol.. i just find it amazing that there are a few people here who think Apple shuts down their website during new product launches because they lack the technical expertise to do it live.. SMH..
 
  • Like
Reactions: Glideslope
I beg to differ. If someone wants a Mac or an iPhone and if they cant get it from Apple website, they will either wait for 6 hours or buy it from one of the many resellers. No reason to buy a product you dont really want just because you cannot buy it online from Apple store in the next 6 hours. In both cases, Apple is going to sell its stuff. Also, in all likelihood, looking at the time Apple normally closes its online store, if you order something right now or after 6 hours, it will get delivered the same time.

You're missing the point... if you own a store and you decide to close your doors for 6 hours so you can hang a sign advertising a new product, how much $$$ in sales are you going to get in those 6 hours? $0 right.... you can't just say well the people who walked by will come back around and make their purchase later because that's an assumption... for accounting purposes the FACT is that you had $0 in sales for that 6 hour period. And when Apple goes back to look at sales figures for 3/24/17 compared to 3/24/16 the figure is probably going to be alot lower due to the 6 hour gap with $0 in sales.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Demo Kit
Apple does not offer an across-the-board discount to businesses like it does for government, government employees, and higher-ed students and staff. Some companies have Apple reps who can negotiate deals, but that's mostly for large orders or customers who order at regular short intervals.

We have a business account as they encourage me to call them instead of ordering through retail and we don't order much. As far as I know, if we purchase more than $5,000 / year, we get a discount.
 
You're missing the point... if you own a store and you decide to close your doors for 6 hours so you can hang a sign advertising a new product, how much $$$ in sales are you going to get in those 6 hours? $0 right.... you can't just say well the people who walked by will come back around and make their purchase later because that's an assumption... for accounting purposes the FACT is that you had $0 in sales for that 6 hour period. And when Apple goes back to look at sales figures for 3/24/17 compared to 3/24/16 the figure is probably going to be alot lower due to the 6 hour gap with $0 in sales.
Firstly that's a wrong analogy... No one is walking around for 6 hours when it comes to online shopping. Also, when they shut down the online store, there will definitely be a spike in sales after they open again which will offset the lack of sales for 6 hours. So no one cares if they earned $0 in sales for those 6 hours as they will definitely be compensated for. You think Apple is stupid to sacrifice 6 hours of sales revenue? Everything is based on calculations.
 
The Amazon Fire phone has been discontinued for a while now. It's not available with any carriers or even on Amazon's website.

I know. It was a complete failure which is why I don't think the original poster should criticise Apple by comparing them to Amazon
 
Do have an an understanding of how Amazon conducts online operations?

As different as Apple is, it's likely their way of doing things versus what's convenient for the rest of us. Also, I can't attest to Amazons functions when site coordinating. Perhaps Amazon has a completely different set of servers that handle site alterations differently, being their vastly larger than most other sites with inventory.

Regardless of how amazon does anything, the main issue is that it would be extremely simple for Apple to manage these changes without causing an outage of several hours. It's simply a marketing gimmick and not even a very good one. It also appears they have no problem pissing off the whole of Europe while doing it. Or maybe they just want to show us their web operations are from '95?
[doublepost=1490439381][/doublepost]
Technically it makes no sense, true, but can serve to create a bit of suspense. ;)

Only for totally clueless people. Everyone else knows already what new meh products they are adding and couldn't care less. The only difference is that those who'd want to buy a device that day can't do it. But maybe it's worth losing a full day of online sales from one whole continent.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Demo Kit
Regardless of how amazon does anything, the main issue is that it would be extremely simple for Apple to manage these changes without causing an outage of several hours. It's simply a marketing gimmick and not even a very good one. It also appears they have no problem pissing off the whole of Europe while doing it. Or maybe they just want to show us their web operations are from '95?
[doublepost=1490439381][/doublepost]

Only for totally clueless people. Everyone else knows already what new meh products they are adding and couldn't care less. The only difference is that those who'd want to buy a device that day can't do it. But maybe it's worth losing a full day of online sales from one whole continent.

Perhaps you can share your concerns and expertise with Apple to help get them on the right marketing path. And, give them some needed help on how to run their online store. I'm certain that would help Apple become a successful company.
 
I'm flying out if the country tomorrow and have decided that my 17" 2010 MBP is, at long last, too heavy to carry for these sorts of trips (I struggled with it on my last trip), plus its battery is starting to wane. As I am self employed, I can wander into town whenever I wish - the Apple store never answers the phone, so yes I had to take a punt on whether they my configuration in stock (they didnt have it on the pricing screens, but they had one in stock, yay).

Need it today, as early as possible, so I can setup my dev environment and ensure everything works for the flight.

Does that satisfy your curiosity...? :)

Ha, yes it does! Those 17" guys are monsters. I'm sure you will like carrying something much lighter.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.