That moaning and groaning you heard in the middle of the night was Apple’s website buckling under the strain of countless people trying to order an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus. Either that, or it was the countless people devolving into monosyllabic communicators - ugh... errr...
Pre-orders were supposed to start at midnight Pacific/3am Eastern. While countless online posts said that that had happened, it seems likely that most of those were set to fire off at one minute after midnight on the west coast while their authors were tucked gently into a dry martini or - who knows - maybe bed. Can I tell you when Apple’s online store came back up? I cannot. For as of this writing at 3:49 am on the east coast, it has not. Still, orders could be made. The Apple Store App for iOS had a bit of the buckling Apple’s full site saw, though it held up a a lot better. I was able to access the store through the app by about quarter-past three. Once in, I did hit more than one stumbling block, though by 3:29, I had confirmation that I had placed an order for a 64GB, Space Grey iPhone 6.
Technical difficulties were one problem - or one type of problem really. A perceived problem with Passbook was another. I’ve had an Apple Gift Card in Passbook that I have been holding onto for a while now specifically to put toward a new iPhone. When I went to pay, applying that card was not an option. Maybe it would have been on the full site, I cannot say.
Had I not been trying to apply the gift card in Apple’s store, I might have had an easier time going though my carrier. Twitter user @deverelle let me know that she “went through (her) carrier and was checked out for two 6+ in under 5 min, (while) Apple was down.”
3:57 in the A.M. by the way and Apple’s store appears to still be down. Cold be worse. Remember standing in line for 12-hours or more for your iPhone 3G? I remember the first six-hours. Before 4:00 a.m., word from another Twitter user - @JSandefer. He says “Apple Store App showing all iPhone 6 4.7(inch) 16GB models as unavailable. Others ship 9/19. (He) was able to buy through AT&T site.”
War stories: these are nothing like them.
