The Apple Store was Swamped

most of the day following yesterday morning's announcement of the availability of Mac OS X Public Beta, the new iBooks and the ATI Radeon graphics card option for all new G4s. Fortunately, we ordered copies of Mac OS X Beta right after posting the morning update before the tidal wave of buyers hit. Most people were not so lucky. Canadian Dale Gervais reported:

"...concerning ordering the Mac OS X public Beta. It seems the Apple site only allows ordering from the US and not from Canada. When I tried to place an order, the shipping info defaults to the US categories (i.e. State, zip) rather than the Canadian categories for Postal code and province. (Even when I tried ordering from the Apple.ca site). I called the 1-800 number to order instead and they said the problem was at their end. Since then I have received error messages from the server when I try to place an order (as of Sept 13 - 11am EST)."

Later in the day reports of long waits of up to 3 hours on the 800 number were common. Wow!