Here’s exactly when you can pre-order an Apple Watch

We’ve known for a while now that pre-orders for the Apple Watch will begin on April 10th, and now we know when on April 10th. As usual with their penchant for dramatics, Apple have made it so that those wishing to be first in line to pre-order their most personal product yet will need to be ready with their finger over their curser at 12:01 AM Pacific Time on Friday the 10th.

For those of us who are easily confused, that’s just after Midnight on Thursday the 9th. 

Sorry East coasters, this means you’re looking at a very late night/early morning, with pre-orders starting for you guys at 3:01 AM. Ouch.

The pre-orders will be going live at the same time in all of the first wave countries, meaning you have quite a lot of competition for those first Apple Watches, with U.K customers being wide eyed and well awake at their pre-order time of 8:01 AM local time, and Australians being able to pre-order at 5:01 PM Australian Eastern Standard Time.

The Apple online store will be going down at 9 PM on Thursday to prepare for the onslaught, and remember- you can also use the Apple Store App, which might  help you bypass some of the expected congestion where everyone who wants an Apple Watch is fighting you for one.

If you are able to pre-order a shiny Apple Watch, then you can look forward to getting it delivered or picking it up beginning April 24th.

If you’re not sure about this whole Apple Watch thing, you should make a try-on appointment at your local Apple Store to look at your options to see if you really want to drop a minimum of $349 on one of these bad boys. There hasn’t been any clarification yet as to when you can make your try-on appointment, but we’re going to guess that it will be either at the same time as pre-orders start (12:01AM PST) or at the beginning of business on Friday, 8:00 AM or 9:00 AM.

We’ll keep you up to date on everything we know when we know it!

Check out these Apple Watch guided tours!

Less than 3 days until the Apple watch is… kind of… released upon us!  If you’re wondering if this most personal of Apple devices is for you, you should probably check out the new video tours that Apple have just put out. 

Right now you can sit and watch pretty pictures about the Apple Watch itself, messages, faces and the digital touch function, and there are more videos forthcoming regarding Siri, phone calls, maps and a bunch of other applications. These should be released over the next 3 days.

Just because we like you, here are the first two videos! To watch the others as they get released, head on over to Apple’s guided tour page. 

The Apple watch will begin pre-orders at 12:01 AM PST on April 10th, with the actual release and start of deliveries beginning on the 24th of April. In-store try-on appointments will also begin April 10th.

How do you buy an Apple Watch?

April 10th is SUPER close!

For those playing at home, April 10th is when you can start seeing for yourself what all the fuss is about the Apple Watch, try one on, and if you like it and have some spare cash sitting around, pre-order it!

You’ll need to make a try-one appointment at a retail store, which you can do through Apple.com or the Apple store App beginning April 10th. Most try-on appointments will be maximum 15 minutes, with the exception of the Apple Watch Edition appointments which will need to be made at select stores and will last up to 30 minutes.

When you get your appointment, get thee to the Apple Store! There, you can decide exactly what kind of watch you’ll want (Apple Watch Sport, Stainless Steel Apple Watch, Apple Watch Edition), which of the 2 size options,  and with what kind of band.

So here’s the dealio: Apple will not be letting customers mix and match multiple watches with multiple bands, or re-size links on bands at their try-on appointments. Bummer hummer, but kind of makes sense, as that seems chaotic even just to type. So, they’ll instead have 18 specific Apple Watch combinations on display at the try-on tables, and 10 specific combinations at the in-store display cases.

If you see what you like, you can pre-order it on the 10th and during the next couple of weeks, but the Apple Watch won’t be launching until April 24th. That is also the date when the first deliveries of the pre-orders will occur.

Now, when it comes to the 24th, you apparently won’t be able to just pop on in to your closest Apple store and buy one, as they won’t be selling them to walk-in customers. 

You’ll actually need to make an ‘Online Reservation’ to hold a specific model at a retail store. If you walk in to a retail store wanting to buy a watch after the 24th, you’ll be invited to try one on, and then an employee will walk you through how to order it online or through the Apple Store App. This also makes sense as there is apparently going to be low inventory of the Apple Watches both in real life and kept at the store, at least initially. Supply and demand people!

If you are interested in buying an Apple Watch, you should check out the Apple website to try and get an idea of what kind of Apple Watch you might be after before your (very short) try on appointment.

How will April 10th work?

Looking to buy an Apple watch? Or simply to go have a gander at them? Starting April 10th, you can do just that (although you won’t be able to take one home until the 24th, only pre-ordering starts on the 10th).

So how will it work? Well, it’ll be really, really busy. Think your average Apple store experience, with about 100 more people. That’s totally  a guesstimate, and we’re also guesstimating that the numbers will go up in the days following the 10th with people who are trying to miss out on the starter crowds. Sneakers!

So: busy. If you want to try on an Apple Watch, you’re looking at making and holding a personal 15 minute appointment with an Apple store employee, where they’ll presumably go through a bunch of questions about what style watch and band you want. Supposedly, they’re being trained to look at your style, what you do for a living, your lifestyle, etc and use that information to recommend the perfect Apple watch for you.

If you’re looking at buying the super fancy Gold Apple Watch Edition, you’re looking at a whole 15 minutes more than the rest of us plebs. That’s right, you get half an hour! And you’ll also get attended to by a specially trained employee. So that’s pretty special.

Apple Watch Edition will however only be available in select stores. The other Apple Watch options will be available to try on  in all Apple retail stores from the beginning of store hours on April 10th. The stores will be transformed overnight to and the watches themselves will be placed in glass display tables surrounded by try-on tables.

There will also be pop-up stores for the fancy Edition Apple Watches, although we haven’t heard of any in the states yet. So far we’ve heard mentioned The Wonder Room in Selfridges, the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, and the Isetan Department Store in Tokyo.

Will you be going to try on an Apple Watch on April 10th?