Apple's US online store buckles under iPhone 4 preorders

Fervent fanboi overload

Updated Apple's US online store appears to be choking under the load of iPhone preorders.

As of 10:00am Pacific time on Tuesday morning — the first day that the iPhone 4 is available for preorders — a trip to the iPhone order page where you are asked "Are you a new or existing AT&T wireless customer?" — after a long delay watching the progress spinner — results in new and existing customers alike being greeted with a variety of errors after choosing their purchase preference:

• A long wait watching the spinning progress wheel, followed by the ever-popular "Safari can’t open the page" error message.
• A long wait watching the spinning progress wheel, followed by being plopped back to the "Are you...?" page.
• A long wait watching the spinning progress wheel, followed by one of the two error messages below:

After a rough start earlier today, the UK's online Apple Store seems to be humming along just fine and dandy — at least when being accessed from here in the US. ®

Update

At 12:30pm Pacific time, we again tried to make it through the iPhone 4 preorder process. This time we made it as far as providing our AT&T info — but when we did, we were then presented with the screen below, complete with our ol' buddy the spinning progress wheel. At 1:00pm, we gave up. This problem appears to be AT&T's.