Things didn’t jump off right at midnight as planned, but by 12:45 PST the iPhone 4S was launched. While it wasn’t the smoothest of situations, things seem to be running well now and you can still pre-order your next gen iPhone online at the Apple Store.
There was definitely a bit of confusion last night as to how the whole process worked. Numerous would be pre-order(ers) were presented with a reservation rather than a solid order when their checkout process was interrupted. Yet other orders completed as expected. This caused major headaches, including the one I had, as Apple’s reservation status page was down for the majority of the night and with a standing reservation, you couldn’t place another upgrade order on the same line.
I finally gave up around 5am and got my 1 hour of sleep before getting up for work. When I awoke though, my inbox brought notice of great joy! Instructions for completing my order as well as a working checkout site greeted me. I quickly sprang to action and finished my checkout. This included picking my data plan and selecting a payment method. Within a few minutes I had an order confirmation with a delivery date of 10/14.
The plan Apple put in place was actually a really good one, tainted only with lack of communication and clear instructions. When your order is placed in reservation status, you are presented with a message that explains that you will need to complete your order at the Apple Store but it doesn’t make clear if that means online or physically in a store. I got the feeling I would have to pick up my device at a physical store. With all of the craziness involving reservations of the iPhone 4, you can imagine why this would piss some people off.
Apple had a plan though, and things seem to have worked perfectly. En route in the next week to my house are two iPhone 4S’s, one white and one black and on my desk sits several cups of coffee to prepare me for the exhaustion bound to hit me from lack of sleep.
We’d love to hear your experiences preordering last night. Feel free to throw them in the comments and let us know how it went for you!
iPhone 4S: Apple Store