Sites crash while customers try to pre-order new iPhones

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. (KGO) -- Pre-orders for Apple's new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus began Friday morning and they crashed the Apple store for two hours. Problems are still on-going.

Eager iPhone 6 seekers who stayed up late to pre-order online, might have been greeted by a downed website or some other clear indication that the Apple site, and others associated with the new iPhone, were overwhelmed.

As Ben Bartlett wrote on twitter at 12:15 a.m. "Maybe #Apple shouldn't have let their livestream crew also run the #iPhone preorder release."

Lindsey Turrentine covers Apple for San Francisco-based CNET. She said, "It seems like there was just a gigantic amount of demand and Apple and a couple of the carriers weren't quite ready to handle the load that they got in the middle of the night."

An Apple spokeswoman acknowledged the site was busy, without saying that's why it crashed. She said, "Response to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus has been incredible, with a recorded number of pre-orders overnight."

The site was up and running and processing iPhone 6 pre-orders just fine, by later in the morning -- something Yama Faezel found to be true.

"I didn't have any trouble. I woke up at 9 a.m. today before work and I just went on Apple.com, pre-ordered it and didn't have any issues," said Faezel.

The iPhone 6 is still available online, but Apple says pre-orders for the larger iPhone6 plus are already sold out.

The iPhone 6 will be available in stores September 19th.