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Apple Store Outages - Reality Distortion or Substandard Ecommerce?

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 04:37 — Seth Weintraub

How has Apple turned a substandard ecommerce outage into an organic marketing blitz?

So the Apple Store went down again briefly last night. It goes down all of the time. Probably about once or twice a week. Sometimes for as much as a few hours. Much more than the Dell site or HP's site. Or at least it certainly seems that way because just about every Mac and gadget blog announces each outage.

When Dell's online store goes down even for ten minutes, the losses to the company are counted in the millions of dollars. Sure, most of those customers will come back when the store comes back online. However, more than just a few go somewhere else. For this reason big ecommerce companies strive to never have even a second of outage. They rightfully spend hundreds of thousands of dollars squeezing every bitof uptime out of their ecommerce system.

Not Apple. The outtages continue unabated. The Apple store is famously built on Apple's WebObjects Server platform so the outtages should certainly be a huge embarrassment to the company. Modern ecommerce systems are able to update products and inventory on the fly. Price changes across the board? Easy. There should be no downtime for any of these activities. Redesigns? Push out some new CSS files - transparent. Why can't Apple get their systems working properly?

Because its all part of the plan?!

Leave it to Apple to turn an embarrassment into a positive for the company. Remember those hundreds of blogs that were announcing "the store is down, are upgrades are on the way?!" That is a lot of free advertising. This is obviously spurred on because at every big Apple announcement, the store goes down. The bloggers are right, usually when the store goes out, there is something new - whether it be a price change, a new configuration or some totally new product or service.

So was it the chicken or the egg?

Did Apple plan this? We can't remember that far back! At some point in the store's infancy they probably did need to take it down to do upgrades. As bloggers caught on to this, Apple probably realized they were recieving the attention of a huge press blitz every time they took down the site - an advantage that far outweighed the loss in sales. To reinforce this behavior, they probably take the store down on small updates, even if their ecommerce engine allows them to do this on the fly. Where else are Mac shoppers going to go?

Of course, we could be giving Apple too much credit. The iTunes store is known throughout the music industry to have a severely archaic backend system that needs huge amounts of human intervention to operate seamlessly the way it does on the customer side. Perhaps Apple's backend is really just that bad. Also don't forget Apple's customer experience priorities. After every upgrade there is probably hours of Quality Assurance going on to make sure things like references to iPhone Extremes aren't left anywhere or Bluetooth icons aren't left in the iPod screenshots.

Somehow I don't think so.

 

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Comments

One would argue that the

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 07:04 — 9to5Mac Noob

One would argue that the Quality Assurance should occur before going live.

Exactly. When they changed

Fri, 10/05/2007 - 11:47 — 9to5Mac Noob

Exactly. When they changed the site for iMac, just after it went live for a few hours, I continued to find issues and bugs, particularly with CSS (and my cache was disabled). I think they're running an archaic platform/process for updates. Buzz is just a fortunate byproduct.

it certainly is the only

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 07:25 — 9to5Mac Noob

it certainly is the only site I bother checking when it is down, and wait for it's return. Very clever! This site outage must be related though to leopard and may be uploading all support docs or something. Surely they need to announce that release date very soon. Getting excited!

The only problem I have with

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 07:39 — 9to5Mac Noob

The only problem I have with the Apple site is how frequently it causes the computer I am working on to freeze; and it has been a problem on more than one computer. It is the only site that I have noticed repeatedly causes problems. It doesn't do much for my customer experience.

I used to have that problem

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 09:38 — 9to5Mac Noob

I used to have that problem with Safari. The Apple site would crash Safari. Then I found a workaround:

First, I upgraded my home computer to Tiger (from Panther) thus allowing me to upgrade Safari 1.x to 2.x. Two moths now, no more problems.

Now on my work computer, while I'm sure I COULD upgrade the OS without catching any grief, I don't want to press my luck at the moment. So instead I upgraded Safari 1.x to Firefox 2.x

No more problems.

See, all you need to do is buy a whole new operating system or download Firefox for free! Easy peasy.

Thanks for the suggestion. I

Fri, 10/05/2007 - 02:11 — 9to5Mac Noob

Thanks for the suggestion.

I am using an xubuntu machine at home, with firefox, and windows at work, also firefox. So I can't (yet) try that; I am on the site deciding what to buy. Though these problems with the site itself really make me wonder.

Ironically, the market

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 07:50 — 9to5Mac Noob

Ironically, the market itself created this frenzy, because once in a while, we go nuts over a change. We then start wanting to go nuts at every change they make. Although we are in for more let-downs than cheers, we still do it.

Go, Mac-Lemmings, go! Refresh to your hearts content because you know something will be different and you want to be "first post" on your favorite blog about what that change is. Once the site is back up, it's a mad frenzy to identify the new item, look, etc. and get it up on the web for everyone else to know.

Apple India's online store

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 07:54 — 9to5Mac Noob

Apple India's online store has been down for 3-4 months now. Every time I contact them (which is every few weeks) they say they're still working on it.

heh.

*just checked*

yup, still down.

http://www.asia.apple.com/store/india/

I find it interesting that

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 07:57 — 9to5Mac Noob

I find it interesting that since the iPhone issue all you guys have had the time to do is find every little nitpicking thing you can to attack Apple. If the thought of Apple Inc. brings such disdain, why do you sit around and obsess about it.
I think I'd need to see some hard facts if you're going to spout out that the Apple store goes down "oh-so-much" more than other online stores.

In case you've forgotten, Apple is still the company that brings you better computers than Dell could ever dream of and a phone that ("oh no it doesn't make waffles for me") is still the most revolutionary phone you've ever seen. So while you sit there, probably typing another entry to attack the fact that Steve Jobs' glasses are too trendy, I'll be at work not obsessing about Apple's apparent inadequacies, Oh High and Mighty Standard of all that is good and right in the world.

[quote=macmanager]I find it

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 08:40 — 9to5Mac Noob

[quote=macmanager]I find it interesting that since the iPhone issue all you guys have had the time to do is find every little nitpicking thing you can to attack Apple. If the thought of Apple Inc. brings such disdain, why do you sit around and obsess about it.
I think I'd need to see some hard facts if you're going to spout out that the Apple store goes down "oh-so-much" more than other online stores.

In case you've forgotten, Apple is still the company that brings you better computers than Dell could ever dream of and a phone that ("oh no it doesn't make waffles for me") is still the most revolutionary phone you've ever seen. So while you sit there, probably typing another entry to attack the fact that Steve Jobs' glasses are too trendy, I'll be at work not obsessing about Apple's apparent inadequacies, Oh High and Mighty Standard of all that is good and right in the world.[/quote]
Does 9to5mac not mean anything to you? All things mac related get loked at yet for a change it is not all iPhone related. Build a bridge.

Get over it fanboy. This

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 09:11 — 9to5Mac Noob

Get over it fanboy. This site is breath of fresh air into monotonic fanboy crap that fast majority of Mac sites are publishing. 9to5Mac seems to be one of the few Mac sites that are thinking what is best for consumers and not for Apple Inc.

Just so that you understand

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 11:43 — 9to5Mac Noob

Just so that you understand this: consumers are not the same as gicks, or hackers.

I think the original poster was referring to the 'attacks' that seem to be coming from this site since the iPhone firmware update. And he is quite right when he points to this non-sense of criticizing everything. A lot of those posts seem to be criticize for the sake of it. That is just not informative but absurd speculation taken from somebody's (the admin) lower torso. And your calling names strategy certainly goes in line with recent posts in this site. Don't take my word for it, go and check the recent news, rumors, etc. from this site and tell me how much of that is at least educated guess. This site gained a lot of credibility rather quickly, but as of late, if is completely changing that.

[quote=macmanager]Get over it fanboy. This site is breath of fresh air into monotonic fanboy crap that fast majority of Mac sites are publishing. 9to5Mac seems to be one of the few Mac sites that are thinking what is best for consumers and not for Apple Inc.[/quote]

The purpose of journalism

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 14:52 — 9to5Mac Noob

The purpose of journalism and publications that publish the work of journalists is to act as a watch dog so that issues that concern the public are passed on to them. Majority of Mac publications are bias on issues concerning Apple Inc. or their products, which isn't beneficial for consumers. Therefore, I can't say anything negative about criticism that 9to5Mac is practicing in their blog. After all it is beneficial for me as a consumer to know about these issues. Also, hacker or a person who is using third party applications is consumer if he or she is purchasing products such as the iPhone. What this consumer does with that product doesn't effect his or her status. For example I have iPhone hacked to the max with non AT&T card. I also spend around 50 000€ a year on Apple hardware / software. I like Apple hardware and software but I'm far from being some fanboy and yes I'm very much a consumer who actually likes the criticism that 9to5Mac is showing in their blog.

Boy, after this iPhone thing

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 10:50 — 9to5Mac Noob

Boy, after this iPhone thing you sure are bitter. You sound like my ex-wife.

is it possible to say

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 11:27 — admin

is it possible to say anything slightly (and this I don't even think is slightly negative) negative about Apple without some fanboys getting whipped into a hissy fit. Seriously. We like the taffic but if you need 100% pure positive apple go here:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews

Apple India is alive and

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 12:38 — 9to5Mac Noob

Apple India is alive and well at http://www.apple.co.in/
Check it out

Never had any problem loading an Apple Store website from any country... except when Steve Jobs is giving a Keynote (for obvious reasons)

Yes, the site is up but the

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 18:19 — 9to5Mac Noob

Yes, the site is up but the Store is down. Click on the "Store" tab and see what happens....

Very nice, but when are we

Thu, 10/04/2007 - 15:53 — 9to5Mac Noob

Very nice, but when are we gonna have some real Mac news again?

Still waiting to hear something about the "different" trackpad in the new Macbooks... :-)

More iPhone price cuts

Fri, 10/05/2007 - 00:49 — 9to5Mac Noob

More iPhone price cuts

Hi All, Do you think it is

Tue, 02/26/2008 - 11:37 — Gogol13 (not verified)

Hi All,

Do you think it is the right time to buy an iPhone, or it is better to wait the next 3 or 4 weeks in order to make sure that Apple is not issuing a brand new iPhone, just after the SDK?

Any visibility on this? Thanks in advance for helping me to make up my mind...

 

Canada Apple Store down all night

Mon, 06/09/2008 - 09:39 — 9to5Mac Noob (not verified)

there is something big coming as the Canada Store has been down and is still down.

Please have the iPhone in Canada starting today? :)

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