Apple's online store becomes unavailable ahead of 'Hello Again' Mac event

We've complained about this before. It's hard to understand why the entire store needs to go down for hours before an event. I would think that, by now, Apple would have figured out how to just change the areas needed, and prepare everything so that it could be done in, say, 30 minutes.

melgross said:

We've complained about this before. It's hard to understand why the entire store needs to go down for hours before an event. I would think that, by now, Apple would have figured out how to just change the areas needed, and prepare everything so that it could be done in, say, 30 minutes.

I think it's more to curb the backlash of someone ordering a product that is updated two hours later ( I bought a MB Pro, then a new one came out with better specs).  If they only killed the Macbook Pro ordering page, this would show people exactly what products were being updated before they were able to do it.

melgross said:

We've complained about this before. It's hard to understand why the entire store needs to go down for hours before an event. I would think that, by now, Apple would have figured out how to just change the areas needed, and prepare everything so that it could be done in, say, 30 minutes.

I agree. Given that Apple is one of the largest online retailers by dollar value, I imagine that their typical hourly sales are massive and that even losing a small percentage of buyers because the store is out is meaningful. Even weirder: iPhone is ~65% of their revenues. They are shutting down their entire store for, in some sense, a MAJORITY of their customers for a minority product (to be clear, we are an all Mac household for 30+ years). When is the last time Amazon had to shut down its store because it introduced a new category (let alone just added a few products which must happen many times a minute)? There must be a theory for this because it can't be impracticability.

Been waiting for a new MBP for a year now, just take my money already !

melgross said:

We've complained about this before. It's hard to understand why the entire store needs to go down for hours before an event. I would think that, by now, Apple would have figured out how to just change the areas needed, and prepare everything so that it could be done in, say, 30 minutes.

I don't think it's a technical issue, it's called SHOWMANSHIP.

Like the store is holding its breath before an exciting announcement.