'We're sorry:' Apple experiences numerous iPhone 6 preorder problems from crushing demand

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  • Reply 161 of 198

    It took me a few tries, and a few hours on the phone to be able to purchase our 2 silver iPhone 6 128GB phone outright (no financing or subsidy) Att, our carrier couldn't do it, so they had apple call me and take care of it. Apple still had to do it in two transactions though. they didn't know why either... ATT seemed to be really buggered. They couldn't figure out why their site wouldn't accommodate my purchase request.

    In the end it's all well. Though we have to wait until mid October to receive them. 

    YAY!!!  we are excited!! Thank you Apple!!

  • Reply 162 of 198
    I upgraded through Verizon and started my online order a few minutes before the 2 AM launch. Inventor didn't seem to be problem, just Verizon's clumsy order system.
  • Reply 163 of 198

    They should figure out how to get their ordering system to open up for each timezone separately. That would distribute the load across time, rather than opening up to the entire world at once.

  • Reply 164 of 198
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by scotty321 View Post



    Apple is supposed to be the best technology company on the planet, yet they have never gotten LiveStreams right and they have never gotten preorders right. I'm being kind by not listing all the other things they've never gotten right!

     

    Never got LiveStreams right? What planet are you on? Planet Exaggeration? In the past 12 years, I've never had a problem with any of their live streams except this recent one. Every one has worked perfectly. Not sure why they messed up so badly this time, and I'm confident it won't happen again. Someone got their bass canned over it. 

  • Reply 165 of 198
    chadbag wrote: »
    Probably right.  While trying to watch on the office Apple TV it kept resetting to a "broadcast truck" or something "truck" screen, so they had some sort of mobile broadcast truck uploading (to satellite?) .  I finally gave up and went to read the Ars Technica liveblog and also brought up the video in the browser, which worked better (though occasionally had to be refreshed).

    That is what I did. I was impressed by the timeliness and completeness of their live blog. It was like being there :)
  • Reply 166 of 198
    galore2112 wrote: »
    How about improving the db infrastructure then? My point still stands.

    Good luck with Apple Pay if Apple's db infrastructure can't even handle a very much predictable phone launch.

    Apple's data centers handle iMessage, iCloud, iTunes, iRadio, FaceTime. Everyday. Why are you even here?
  • Reply 167 of 198
    And nothing about Apple not taking their own gift cards on the iOS app....
    THAT pissed me off. I had an Apple Gift card all set to make my purchase so that I wouldn't run into any credit card issues like what happened to others. So I go onto my app last night at 3:01am EST, get my order all set and when I go to check out, the only option to pay is credit card. So I go to the website store and sorry, it was down. By the time it came online at 5:00 it was already too late all the 6 Pluses were back ordered.
    So now I'm going to wait until I can get my hands on them and decide if I really do want the 5.5 or if the 4.7 will be enough for me.
  • Reply 168 of 198
    After an hour and a half of waking up in the middle of the night I was able to get a reservation number and will get mine on the 19th! The trick was to use the apple store app from an ios device that was the onlyway I could get through.
  • Reply 169 of 198
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by nkhm View Post



    Why apologise?. People need to learn some patience. There is a capacity to any system. Try again later, stupid spoiled self-entitled people with first world problems. It's a mobile phone, not medicine or your next meal.



    Get a grip.



    When did we lose the civilised art of waiting our turn?

    It will be with Apple Pay! <img class=" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" /> 

  • Reply 170 of 198

    Lol I watched the stream from my iPad which i air played to my apple tv hooked to my big screen tv without a hitch.

  • Reply 171 of 198
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by galore2112 View Post





    How about improving the db infrastructure then? My point still stands.



    Good luck with Apple Pay if Apple's db infrastructure can't even handle a very much predictable phone launch.

     

    Pretty much the stupidest fucking if/then statement I've ever read. So, if Apple's infrastructure (which is also reliant on 3rd party carrier infrastructures) doesn't perfectly handle the INSANE spike that happens on launch night, once a year, which sees millions upon millions of hits simultaneously each requiring a dynamic and complex purchasing process that is tied with authentication with other companies systems, that somehow means Apple can't handle Apple Pay?

     

    You clearly don't even have the faintest understanding how any of this stuff works if you make such a moronic conclusion. An Apple Pay transaction is a million times simpler than a single one of these online transactions, and requires pretty much zero bandwidth. You don't have a "point", and your laughably childish "just improve the db infrastructure" solution is not even worth commenting on. Also, Apple will not build out their store server capacity to perfectly handle the busiest few hrs of the year, because that means it will be 98% wasted every single other day of the year. 

     

    Apple Pay is going to be just fine, so "good luck" indeed. 

  • Reply 172 of 198

    I was shocked last night to see the web site never load for the hour and a half I was trying to pre order.  I had the web site, AT&T's web site, my iPhone and iPad all trying to access their store.  About 45 minutes in, I had a transaction going on my iPad, but when I finally got to the part where it wanted my security key off my credit card, the transaction failed and I was forced to abort.  Back to squre one.  

     

    Then 45 minutes later I was about to give up, but my iPhone hooked me up with a 6+ 64GB. And the transaction went through.  What I thought was interesting is even though my phone apple store app showed the AT&T 6+ available in the config. I wanted, the iPad app said unavailable.  Must have been crazy load on their servers.

     

    So I should have my big *ss phone on Friday.  Can't wait!

  • Reply 173 of 198
    I started trying to pre-order right at 12:01a last night and kept running into glitches after selecting which iPhone I wanted. Finally about 12:56am my order went through successfully using the Apple store app on my iPhone. I got what wanted: iPhone 6 + in space gray 64gb scheduled for delivery on launch day no less. Big smile for me!!!
  • Reply 174 of 198
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Paul94544 View Post



    There is a saying that people quote all the time "life goes by so fast". There is a misunderstanding with this point of view that I don't buy into - an incorrect awareness. Life in fact has no speed at all, it is always there. Also "Time" is simply a human concept. It doesn't exist, except as an idea in our heads. The problem isn't life, no the problem is me! I'm the one that is going too fast. If I can just slow down and stop, then I can actually appreciate life and then it will become rich and time won't appear to go by so fast it may even stop! This is called in some circles as the "Divine Now" it goes by many names like "Samedi" in Buddhism . All those people searching to get away from it all are longing for this and probably not really finding it. It doesn't really matter if one attempts to escape to Australia, Italy, France, to the country , drugs, alcohol, or sex, bdsm or any other place or substance - we can't escape ourselves. Lusting after the latest iPhone won't make us any happier. Deep down we simply re-create the drama where ever we go . I can distract my self from myself by filling my day with, projects, making money, family, tweaking smartphones and belittling others and their choice of phone but that does nothing, the simple fact is that we are all terrified of looking at one thing! And that thing is ourselves!

     

    Yeah, I prefer matte screens too.

  • Reply 175 of 198

    I upgraded three lines with ATT today, it was a nightmare.  I tried several times throughout the early morning and finally place my successful upgrade orders(3).  All three orders sent text messages to their phones saying there was a problem with the credit card authorization.  Ahem, don't they authorize on-line?  So basically my orders were placed, but as far as I am concerned in limbo.  I have tried all day to call ATT several times and after entering order number and waiting 30 seconds, they tell me they are having technical difficulty and they hang up.   I was finally successful later this afternoon to log on to the URL they sent me and re-submit my credit card information.  Mind you I did not change a thing, just re-submitted.  Well I still have one of my orders that is not authorized.  When I log on to their web site they gave me and enter my order number, they tell me I have to call them, which I do, but same result they just hang up.  I realize this is just a phone, but if you cannot handle the volume, then don't take my order.  Very frustrating, I believe this is all a technical problem.  Did they not staff up their call centers?

  • Reply 176 of 198
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,330member

    I don't think many of us mere mortals realize the scalability and elasticity challenges that are behind this mass ordering congestion. I think everyone is familiar with grocery stores that have 12 POS stations, of which 3 or 4 are ever open - except right before before major holidays and even then the lines are long at all available stations. Putting all that excess POS capacity in place year round for a half dozen heavy shopping days a year is extremely inefficient and expensive unless you can add and pay for more capacity only when needed.

     

    With new Apple product introductions you have to multiply this challenge times millions and then start considering all of the cross coupled external dependencies that come into play with carrier cross checks and credit card authorizations. No matter how well you build out one part of the system the congestion bottleneck simply moves to another part of the system. I believe Apple has done a commendable job of building out massive capacity and elasticity, at great expense to Apple, but it may still not be enough to handle worldwide demand when a very highly compelling new product is put up for sale for the first time worldwide. What are the owners of the other dependencies in the system, like the credit card subsystems, doing to hold up their end of the deal?

     

    This is a complex system issue. It can be modeled to predict the capacity demand and performance requirements ahead ahead of time. No doubt this was done for the parts of the system that Apple controls when they provisioned whatever capacity they had ahead of time. But there are many parts of the system Apple does not control and there are failure modes that their modeling did not anticipate. Or maybe the demand has been so far off the charts that they were unprepared to handle the flood. Personally I think Apple probably did a better job of anticipating demand than did the other participants in the system.

     

     Apple could certainly throttle demand by setting up various types of queuing and reservation systems. But they try to be fair and give everyone worldwide the same opportunity to join the party at the same time. Seems fair and reasonable to me even if it's imperfect. This places a huge burden on Apple to continuously improve their systems, which they certainly do, but time and again we see similar issues because the demand just keeps rising and Apple keeps setting the bar higher for itself by adding more countries to the first release. Apple could certainly mitigate this problem by unfairly excluding some potential countries and customers from the party, or it could be like our South Korean friend and build far less compelling products.

     

    Finally, did anyone NOT see this coming? The iPhone 5 was one of the most highly anticipated products of all time. But we ended up with the iPhone 4S which was a nice unit (I bought it) and then the actual iPhone 5 family that was pretty cool but both of these releases were still evolutionary refinements. The iPhone 6 family is the kind of change that we originally expected the iPhone 5 would be. With so many more people now seeing smartphones are general purpose mobile computing devices the iPhone 6 is poised to attract a vast array of new customers besides sating the huge pent-up demand that's been building for 2+ years with iPhone users. Two years is a lifetime in this technology space. If you think you have a cost effective way to solve the resulting iPhone 6 ordering tsunami class of problems please do give Apple's technical recruiting office a call. I'm sure Apple is doing their best to ensure that the worldwide demand for their products does nothing but increase over time so this problem won't go away any time soon. 

  • Reply 177 of 198
    Apple obviously were well aware of the issues likely to occur once online ordering was open to all after the product announcement. Even Tim Cook himself anticipated "The Mother Of All Upgrades"

    The problem is, iPhone demand is increasing exponentially rather than uniformly, so Apple's preparations have been shown to be "skating to where the puck is".

    What a lovely First World problem for a company to have!
  • Reply 178 of 198
    genovelle wrote: »
    I kind of felt that way about the stream.  The last two or three events have been streamed with no issues at all. Then there is a failure but only on the website.  The stream worked perfectly on Apple TVs.  Maybe They should have everyone to sign in via their Apple ID to see the stream. 

    I had the opposite experience. I had to give up on my AppleTV and go get my Mac.
  • Reply 179 of 198
    First world problems. The same sort of story was on the Verge and showed tons of tweets from angry people wanting to pre-order iPhones saying "**** Apple!" "I'll never buy another Apple product EVAR!" So on and so fourth.

    Give me a break. It's a pre-order for crying out loud. Yes, you should receive better service. Yes, you should be able to get it within a reasonable timeframe. But you know these people. They'll be back for the Watch, the new iPad, the new iPhone, the new [insert products that Cook hinted at that aren't even a category yet]. Shut up and deal with it. Samsung may sell a lot of phones, but nobody...and I mean nobody...not even Samsung...can top the type of hype and the demand that Apple commands. Samsung, product-wise, is probably on the decline now. Nobody really cares about their stuff anymore. They got popular blatantly copying Apple...then remained popular for enormous phones...and now they throw whatever gimmicks they can on their devices to stay relevant. Curved edge of surface on side? Could be interesting, but I guarantee you nobody outside of a few Samsung watchers thinks thats going to reinvigorate Samsung. Apple, meanwhile, innovates with what they have and stays away from gimmicks. Improve the overall experience...not add uselessly to it. This is why people buy Apple products...even the whiny ones who swear they won't be coming back.
  • Reply 180 of 198
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by island hermit View Post

     

     

    Don't you mean any Apple Pay retail day... or do you think that Apple Pay is going to be used for "every" transaction.

     

    I really doubt there is any day that compares to an Apple preorder day. Electronic transactions are a totally different bag.


     

    Then you are simply delusional. 

     

    Apple won't handle every transaction, that would be foolish to think so. However, if Apple can't get pre-orders of their own product, that they know will be hugely popular, done correctly, how can you imagine then doing so for any number of products on sale during a holiday? 

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