I finally got my order with Apple straightened out. I am not sure if anything
that I did with Apple changed anything, but I contacted my bank representative
to see if there were any problems with a new account making large purchases (I
have had that problem with other banks), and he indicated that there should be
no problems with it. Furthermore, he looked at my account and determined that
Apple should not still be allowed to keep the pending charge on my account since
they did not have the authorization they needed. So it looks like that
particular part of the problem might have been on my bank's end. Anyway, once I
had access to the money again, I went down to the Apple store near me and bought
the computer from the store. They store's reps did not hassle me too much with
extra offers once I told him that I was a programmer and that I was going to be
using the computer to write Python programs. It marks the first time that I have
bought a computer from a brick and mortar store. I hope that my experience is
not representative of the typical Apple Online Store experience.