Apple Watch Pre-Orders Will Start Just After Midnight Pacific On April 10th

@grg / 1:55 pm PDT • April 3, 2015

We knew the date; now we know the time.

Apple Watch pre-orders will officially begin at 12:01 a.m. PDT on April 10th, according to a just updated Apple Store front page.

Want an Apple Watch and live in New York? Hope you like staying up ’til 3 a.m.!

Why might Apple fire sales up at such a late hour? The company generally doesn’t explain its reasoning for anything, but we can make a few assumptions:

Traffic control. Apple’s pre-order pages consistently buckle under the weight of a zillion Apple devotees pounding the refresh key. By pushing it to midnight pacific, they’re limiting it to the people who really, really want to get their pre-order in first and are willing to stay up late to do so . And if the servers do still buckle, there are less people to see the complaints on Twitter
Apple generally goes by a west coast clock; by starting it at midnight, their “first day sales” numbers will account for a full 24 hours
It’s Apple, not some company debuting their wares on Kickstarter. Whatever timing they choose, it’s unlikely to be a factor that negatively impacts sales — so they might as well choose a time that makes things easier for them.

Pro tip: if Apple.com goes down, sometimes Apple’s Apple Store iPhone app continues to work and accept orders.