Reebootva

Was on promptly waiting at 8:00 am EDT. Like all, i got the “We’re getting ready” message. Then switched to the browser. I had set up my order in advance (for 2 Pro Max for me and wife). I clicked both links and just let it sit (it refreshed on its own). This was on Mac Mini.
In parallel i used the App Store on my iPad and connected through cellular. Same message. I let it all sit while i did some other things. First to come up to the site was the iPad Apple Store app. But every time i tried my preset order, it just skipped back to the main page.
 I was about to walk through a manual new order when my Mac mini screens both popped to life prepopulated with the preset orders. Clicked through both and got 2 15PM - White and Blue Titanium both delivering Sep 22. All completed by about 8:12 am EDT I have seen commonly here and there that 5:10 PDT seems to be the popular time people got in.
 I couldn’t help but wonder if what apple experiences here is similar to a DDoS attack? Just too many people hitting the site at the exact same moment cripples it. I am guessing apple has some kind of failover that redirects traffic rather than crashing their site? Once the initial rush is over, things settle back to a manageable level. Don’t crush me here. I know I don’t know what i am talking about (lol). Just speculating a little.

davicon said:

That was the worst pre-order process I’ve experienced in years. Despite having all the pre-qualification stuff done (and waking on time for these stupid early morning pre-order launches), I spent a half hour experiencing various errors before it could even access my pre-order information. By the time it let me complete the transaction my estimated delivery was October 9-16. Very disappointing. 

I liked the way they let us pre-set the order. That was loads better than summer 2021 where the M1 iPad ordering was a nightmare. I set up my order 3 times before it finally let me finish it. I wasted 20 minutes trying over and over again. This was more just waiting for the site to respond. Once i got preset order to load, it was confirm, confirm, confirm, done.
Thinking about site traffic, i have to believe having a few million people do all that active choice and option selection in advance meant more people just like me - connected to the site for 1 minute or less vs the time it can take to chip through all the selections, then go to pages for shipping, payment, etc. On the preset, that was all done in advance and ready to go. I think it was a good call by apple to do that.
 The only companies i can think of who have to deal with this kind of traffic in one instant are concert ticket sites. And I bet this traffic still dwarfs that a by few orders of magnitude. I am not sure there IS a way to do this any better. I think it’s light years from camping out in front of the Apple Stores 10-15 years ago. Lol