Despite everything...very impressed with the launch.

[anez]

In my view, there were two things wrong with this launch:

1. Pre-orders began before try-ons, which is acceptable with something like a phone or a tablet, but less so for something you have to physically wear.

2. The order in which orders were placed are seemingly not being honoured, because that's making people crazy, and I fully understand why.

For me, the launch went pretty well: mine is already on its way, so I have no reason to. I still feel there was some poor planning and management here.

I do have a personal issue with the level of communication (or lack thereof,) but I think that's par for the course for most companies at this level.

 

[KPOM]

Apple's site: dead. ATT's site: dead. T-Mobile's site: dead. Best Buy's site: dead. Radio Shack's site: dead. Optus, Telstra, 3, Rogers, Canada Bell, Vodafone, Orange. All of these sites crashed, with some of them physically crashing because they could not handle the onslaught of people trying to buy the phone.

Then on top of that, after Steve himself stated in that keynote that there would be a White iPhone 4 available at launch, it wasn't available at all, and not for another 4 months after that.

Again, this is absolutely nothing, and watches were ordered and shipped when they said they were, not like the iPhone 4, which incurred anywhere from 6 weeks to 5 months of delays.

Search this forum, and you'll find some 30 - 40 page threads on how bad the iPhone 4 launch was.

BL.

Agreed. And then when they finally got the phone, they had to deal with dropped calls because of a faulty antenna design.

People tend to view the Steve Jobs era with rose-tinted glasses. Sure, he was a visionary leader, but he single-handedly caused many of the supply chain issues. Supposedly the white iPhone was delayed for 4 months because he didn't like the shade of white.

 

[alexwei]

Dont get me wrong, as much as I like whine about not getting the watch sooner, I do appreciate and acknowledge the effort they must have put into this whole thing.

 

[Blacklabel34]

For those complaining about the AW launch, keep in mind that you had a functioning website where you could actually order it.

When you have had 4 or more sites all crash within an hour from everyone overloading it to where everyone caused a DoS, then find everything gone when the pieces were picked up to the point of a 2 month estimated shipping time, then even seeing those times slip, then you will have room to talk.

Until then, this is nothing.

For those that are new here or don't remember, here's a refresher:



Apple's site: dead. ATT's site: dead. T-Mobile's site: dead. Best Buy's site: dead. Radio Shack's site: dead. Optus, Telstra, 3, Rogers, Canada Bell, Vodafone, Orange. All of these sites crashed, with some of them physically crashing because they could not handle the onslaught of people trying to buy the phone.

Then on top of that, after Steve himself stated in that keynote that there would be a White iPhone 4 available at launch, it wasn't available at all, and not for another 4 months after that.

Again, this is absolutely nothing, and watches were ordered and shipped when they said they were, not like the iPhone 4, which incurred anywhere from 6 weeks to 5 months of delays.

Search this forum, and you'll find some 30 - 40 page threads on how bad the iPhone 4 launch was.

BL.

Sorry, but I didn't have a functioning website for the first 9 minutes. Apple's website would not load for me. I had my iPad, MacBook Pro and iMac ready to go 30 minutes before midnight. Website would not load period! I kept clicking refresh, checking my internet settings and closing and reopening Safari, Chrome and Firefox. I finally decided to restart all my devices (even though I did this half an hour ago)
At this time it was 12:09 am PST with countless attempts to refresh, closing and reopening windows for whatever reason the page finally loaded. I was able to place my order inside of a minute and got my email confirmation at 12:11 am PST.

Now for the strange part...
The strangest part about all of this was when I went to the Apple Store the following day for my "Try-on" appointment and spoke to two different Apple employees. Each said they experienced the same exact thing! Both said they ordered their watch at the store from the work computers in the back. They mentioned that they couldn't access the site either for a few minutes. What's even stranger is they said their system is separate and that I shouldn't have experienced the same issue they did.
I don't know what to believe but I do know this.

The Apple site did not work for the first 9minutes (via my iMac, iPad Air, and MacBook Pro, all running the latest software)