While the buzzkill emanating from the lack of an iPhone 5 dampened the spirits of the truly tech-obsessed, it still didn’t prevent Apple’s site from crashing after the Cupertino, Calif. launch.
Between 3 and 4 p.m., the site intermittently threw up denial-of-service notices in place of its minimalist home page, as an unverified number of users flocked to Apple.com to search for more information on the new iPhone 4S.
Apple could not be reached for immediate comment, but it became evident that, even while its stock dropped during the announcement, Apple has captured the market’s attention with its new phone.
The iPhone 4S, unveiled by new CEO Tim Cook in his first Apple product launch, has a longer battery life, better graphics, an A5 dual-core processor and enhanced video and camera capacity. It also is capable of voice-recognition, which new app Siri uses to respond to voice commands and translate verbalized questions into Internet-researched answers.
In fact, it may have been Siri which will save the iPhone 4S, driving its demand: During Siri’s announcement and live demonstration, Apple’s stock, which had plunged by 4 percent since the beginning of the event, rallied to close near opening levels.
Though Apple may be one of the world’s most valuable technology companies, its servers may not be equipped to handle intense traffic on the level of, for instance, Google. To date, Google has only crashed once, when the news of Michael Jackson’s death broke.