My first skim of the morning tech news turned up a bunch of chatter about Apple's "store" being down. This happens a couple of times every year. Apple "takes the store down" and people start getting all excited that something new is on the way. It's hard to believe Apple doesn't get reamed for this practice.
"We are busy updating the store for you..." WTF? There's nothing wrong with marketing and building hype around products. That is what Apple is all about. But suggesting that a multi-billion dollar technology company has to take its online store offline to add a few products? Seriously? It's just insulting.
Two things are possible:
- Apple's Web infrastructure really is so creaky, fragile, and amateurish that the company really does have to take the store offline in order to update its product pages. Other e-commerce companies solved this problem sometime in the mid-90's. If Apple hasn't gotten this whole Web thing figured out, maybe they could hire one of the few hundred thousand unemployed techies who could whip up a solution for them in a few days.
- Apple has the whole tech press and its fanbase so keyed up over its products that the company doesn't even have to bother with anything like traditional PR. Just wait a few hours before a new product release and slap the "store down" notice on the store page and the tech press will take care of it for them. And yes, I appreciate the irony of writing about it even more...
This probably wouldn't rub me the wrong way so much except that this always happens first thing in the morning before I've had my first dose of caffeine. 
2 Comments
The only thing more frustrating than their tactics and the unquestioning legions of fans who can justify any Apple move, is the fact that it is so difficult not to comment on these two things. They appear to win either way.
@Andrew Yeah. It's tricky like that.