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US East Coasters: What's your preorder strategy?

Nikos

Nikos

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 20, 2008
1,652
323
New York
This is for those of us on the East coast who have to be up early for work on Friday morning. I no longer have the luxury of a flexible work schedule, so tomorrow is going to be rough.

I'm looking at three options.

1. Sleep as early as possible after getting home from work and wake up at 2:45 with (hopefully) 6-7 hours of sleep.

2. Sleep at my normal time (23:30-1:00) for a few hours and hope to get some sleep again after preordering.

3. Stay up until the phone is preordered and hope to get any sleep afterwards.

Option 1 seems like the smartest but might be hard to pull off. I can't sleep when there are things on my mind, especially so early. Option 2 might work but I'd be afraid of over-sleeping.
I get the feeling I'll be pulling an all-nighter and powering through the day with 5-Hour Energy tomorrow.

Assuming preorders start at 3:00 AM Eastern, what's going to be your strategy?
 
If last year is any indication, the servers will be ridiculously jammed for the first hour. My guess is that as long as you order before 7am tomorrow chances are pretty good it will arrive on the 21st. For me, if it comes on the 24th it's still better than waiting for the crowds to die down at the NYC stores (that took weeks last year). Tim Cook's gotten better at meeting demand, so perhaps the store stock will improve more quickly this year, but I still think next weekend is going to be crazy.
 
I don't believe the stores are going to be as crazy this year. That's not to say there won't be line, but it won't be as nuts as previous years.
 
wake up at 2:45 est and order until it goes through. I have court in the morning and that last until about 2:00 pm. I can deal with being tired ONE day :)

Have my computer on apple.com, att.com, and also using the app on my phone.
 
Luckily I work a 2nd job as a door guy at a night club. I don't get home till around 2am anyway ill probably stay up and preorder.
 
I'll get up at 4:30 when my wife gets up for work, place my order after the first initial onslaught of reserves, then go to work when I'm done. Nice start to my day.
 
sleep from 11pm to 2:50am
set up macbook to apple.com, at&t.com
set up app

rinse and repeat until the phone is mine
 
I'm going with option 1. Last year I stayed up to pre-order and then went to bed. I overslept. I hate that.
 
Just got off the horn with Verizon

You can add a new line and keep unlimited data.

You can preoder and add a new line to your existing account at 3:01AM EST and not lose it in a simple way.

GO to My Verizon, Click PRE SELL.. Add the new line. Purchase the iPhone you want on the NEW line.

Find yourself a dummy phone [a non smartphone phone line a Moto Razr or flip so you'l only be charge $9.99 for the extra line instead of $40 for a smartphones typical data package. Then switcht he iphone 5 to your smartphone line

You can keep unlimited data, NOT pay $600,700,849 for a iphone, just at the extra cost of $10 a month.

Only issue is you have a phone with a new two year contract. No biggie..

I'll wake up at 5am, preorder my iphone, turn back over go to bed.
 
well since I leave for work at 6:00am, I'm setting my alarm for 3:00am. Will have my iPad up and charged for the pre-order marathon. Hopefully I can just wake up, pre-order on apple.com and go back to sleep for a couple of hours. I also will be trying the applestore app. Never tried that before.

If by 6am, I still haven't pre-ordered, I'll try to pre-order on my work computer and I'll try verizon.com, although that is my last option. Rather get the phone straight from apple, plus I'm ordering applecare +.

I feel somewhat confident that I'll pre-order before 6am... Then again I'm determined. :)
 
djransom said:
I don't believe the stores are going to be as crazy this year. That's not to say there won't be line, but it won't be as nuts as previous years.
Click to expand...

For what reason? Better supply? Lower sales? I think Apple has gotten better (the iPad launch had fewer noticeable lines, but higher overall sales). Apple is also being really aggressive with the launch schedule to get it out in 31 countries before the end of the month (so they can report higher sales to the Street), which might cut down on reseller activity in big city centers. A lot of scalpers got caught out by the new iPad's availability in March and may be a bit gun shy. But I think there will still be long lines. Heck, there were long lines last year for the 4S, and it was a far less significant upgrade.
 
HeyGreggie said:
Just got off the horn with Verizon

You can add a new line and keep unlimited data.

You can preoder and add a new line to your existing account at 3:01AM EST and not lose it in a simple way.

GO to My Verizon, Click PRE SELL.. Add the new line. Purchase the iPhone you want on the NEW line.

Find yourself a dummy phone [a non smartphone phone line a Moto Razr or flip so you'l only be charge $9.99 for the extra line instead of $40 for a smartphones typical data package. Then switcht he iphone 5 to your smartphone line

You can keep unlimited data, NOT pay $600,700,849 for a iphone, just at the extra cost of $10 a month.

Only issue is you have a phone with a new two year contract. No biggie..

I'll wake up at 5am, preorder my iphone, turn back over go to bed.
Click to expand...

An extra $240 to do this? Ouch.
 
I live in the midwest, so it is 2 am for me... My plan to wake up around 3 am... and order it, then go back to sleep.

I wake up a bunch of times throughout the night already anyway thanks to my allergy problems, so getting back to sleep will be a piece of cake.

I look forward to LTE and having 64 GB of storage
 
I think unlike the old days (iphone 3gs, 4) they're much better prepaired these days. i doubt you'll have to order any sooner than noon EST to get on on launch day. I'll probably stay up drag tomorrow, just to be safe :D
 
jrcsh6 said:
I think unlike the old days (iphone 3gs, 4) they're much better prepaired these days. i doubt you'll have to order any sooner than noon EST to get on on launch day. I'll probably stay up drag tomorrow, just to be safe :D
Click to expand...

well im going to get up at 2:55am just to make sure.
 
KPOM said:
For what reason? Better supply? Lower sales? I think Apple has gotten better (the iPad launch had fewer noticeable lines, but higher overall sales). Apple is also being really aggressive with the launch schedule to get it out in 31 countries before the end of the month (so they can report higher sales to the Street), which might cut down on reseller activity in big city centers. A lot of scalpers got caught out by the new iPad's availability in March and may be a bit gun shy. But I think there will still be long lines. Heck, there were long lines last year for the 4S, and it was a far less significant upgrade.
Click to expand...

Preorders for all carriers along with better supply. I didn't say there wouldn't be a line, it just won't be as nuts though.
 
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