A quick anecdote to illustrate: When Apple first started to livestream events, I talked with a high-level Apple exec who worked behind the scenes to coordinate its efforts.
They explained to me that the amount of traffic Apple saw during that event actually disrupted internet services on the west coast, especially the Bay Area. Completely saturated it.
Things have changed, but even now, infrastructure companies like telecoms can't always deliver service at peak times.
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So please, spare us the eyerolls and the tut-tuts about how Apple should have figured this stuff out by now. They have. There's only so much they can do.
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@03a95182 Rituals are the life’s blood of religions, governments, and social media.
@03a95182 yes and it is an issue when the website works but the app does not, especially for a subset of customers like the upgrade program. They have some BFFs or something for the app that the website is not using, and those services are not sufficiently resourced.
@03a95182 Nobody forced them to commit to one specific time globally, knowing the peak load that would generate. They shouldn’t make promises they know they won’t be able to keep, especially not to people who then had to stay awake for nearly an hour in the middle of the night as a result.
@538a1fbd you're right, of course. Apple should move heaven and earth to cater to tech nerds' FOMO.
@03a95182 I’m an IT worker too, so I understand that it’s complex. I’m not saying I could do better if I were on the team (I’m sure I could not). But handling that peak load isn’t the only way they could address the problem. How many people were out there repeatedly force quitting and reloading the store app because they weren’t sure if it would automatically close the splash screen once everything was ready? Why do countries with different iPhone SKUs need simultaneous preorders? etc
@538a1fbd MLK Jr. said "Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated." Obviously he never got a chance to see the Internet in action. 🙃
@03a95182 I’m an avoid the rush guy on the hardware updates by waiting until after the holidays, if it’s my turn in the barrel. Just walking into an Apple Store and saying ‘gimme’ has its perks.
I did wait in line for iPad initial roll out however.
@03a95182 I don’t agree, if they can’t make it work change the process. Allow preorders for a day or a week, then process them in random order on launch day. Just because it’s hard I don’t give them a pass. They do hard things all the time and come up with innovative ways around problems. I think they actually don’t mind the store cratering, it’s more publicity (“look how high the demand is for the new phone!”). Or they still just don’t have their sharpest engineers working on the cloud side.
@a819ea45 There's something to be said for creating a sense of scarcity as a PR trick, but really what we're talking about is Apple nerds' fear of missing out, amplifying their already pretty heightened sense of self-entitlement.
Very few of us who aren't on deadline for a tech publication actually *need* to pre-order our iPhones the second they're available, and Apple doesn't and shouldn't need to develop super-elaborate technical solutions to police human behavior.
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