New iPad Overwhelms Internet, Apple Store (Updated)

Update: Pre-orders are now going through, though slowly. It took several tries for GBM editors to order theirs. Hopefully by tonight the load on the servers will ease up.

Excitement over today’s new iPad 3 announcement and launch has had an unsurprising, but still frustrating effect on many websites, including Apple’s online store. Even though the iPad page has a Pre-Order button, the actual store isn’t ready to accept them.

(Read: iPad 3 Pre-Order Button is Live, Apple Store Still Down)

The store continues to fluctuate between the (sadly familiar) We’ll be back soon sticky note and a server error that indicates that the store isn’t just not ready, it’s actually going down under a load of heavy traffic.

Interest in the new iPad also caused server problems for news sites covering the event. We experienced some issues here at GottaBeMobile, as did sites using Cover It Live to post quick updates in real time, such as The Verge.

It’s like being Slashdotted.

It’s hard to tell if pre-orders have started if only you can get to the page. Our own Kevin Purcell got the page to load, then got as far as choosing the iPad he wanted before the store went down again. Since then no one on our team has seen the mysterious and fabled pre-order page. Hopefully soon.

(Read: Buy the New iPad Now Unless You Want to Wait Months)

Usually when a big tech event causes this many problems on the web Twitter gets overwhelmed as well. That doesn’t appear to be the case, today, as folks happily tweeted all through the announcement, offering up opinions on what Tim Cook and the team at Apple offered up.

We’ll update you when the Apple store finally comes online.