A friend of mine is desperately waiting for a 27'' iMac to become available. You can't order those from Apple yet. So Apple is not necessarily doing it smarter than Google. Probably they simply can project when iPhone 5s will be available again, whereas they can't project availability of iMacs, and Google can't project availability of significant numbers of N4s.
I suppose it is a fine line to walk: you could of course always accept orders and just queue them indefinitely. But after a certain period of time, people who have ordered and don't get anything might feel even more angry than people who can't order to begin with.
I suppose it is a fine line to walk: you could of course always accept orders and just queue them indefinitely. But after a certain period of time, people who have ordered and don't get anything might feel even more angry than people who can't order to begin with.