The launch itself was fine. Yes there are issues such as some models, like the link bracelets, being extremely rare in these early stages. And they probably struggled to determine where demand was going to be across the product range. But the uglier side of the launch was with customers themselves.
I wouldn't call only shipping 22% of preorders fine. And the link bracelets weren't "extremely rare", they were non existent. They opened the store with a 4-6 week wait for link watches because they hadn't made A SINGLE ONE for consumers and didn't start until orders were in, like they assumed they would sell zero. Where Apple failed the most was managing expectations and communicating. ALL of their marketing up to launch made it seem all but assured that watches would be in all of our hands by that Friday. What they didn't tell us up front, was that some of the more expensive models wouldn't be available for over a month, we only learned that after hitting the store at 3:01am. Then we hear that they "are pleased to tell customers that the estimated delivery dates are a bit pessimistic and some will receive theirs earlier than expected" which created false hope and was an outright lie for many models. Which I guess is nice for the people that got theirs early, but it's like standing in line for a meal when you're hungry, having the people say "we're going to start serving early," and then watching everyone else skip you in line while you're left at the back. It's not fun. Whoever did their research into what they needed to produce should be FIRED. To not only miss the mark with production, but also miss it so badly that they had to scrap in-store sales, divert those watches to pre-orders and STILL come up so short means someone royally f*#$ed up. Sure, chalk it up to "a new market for them" but they still should have known that by the end of the year, they would be able to sell any and all of the non-edition watches they could make (we're not talking about a perishable commodity).
I've got up at 3:01 EST for pre-orders for years and have always got what I ordered on launch day, not 2-4 weeks later. Which is fine, but I had the expectation, thanks to Apple's marketing and PR, that I would have it on launch day. And here we are nearly a week post launch, and I'm still two weeks away from the earliest possible date on their window. My mother texted me a picture of her Space Grey black sport band Watch, which she admits she doesn't know how to use and only got because of the animated Mickey watch face. To a hardcore early adopter like myself, it's just twisting the knife. A simple email stating, "Many watches are moving up in delivery but the model you ordered is not, it takes longer to produce link watches and the originally shipping date for you, unlike many others who are getting theirs early, is accurate" would be nice to get.
