You calling others poor bastards and at the same time admitting to own a white 64gb ip6+ just made my day.
Did you wear a skirt?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Angela Ahrendts: 'The Days of Waiting in Line' at Apple Stores Are Over
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You calling others poor bastards and at the same time admitting to own a white 64gb ip6+ just made my day.
Did you wear a skirt?
Correct. Be happy Apple Stores still exist. Retail in general is dying, get used to it. Lest you be one of those crying over Blockbuster, CompUSA, and Radioshack.
So this is why Apple paid her multi-millions of dollars in Apple Stock options?
Really?
To make this executive decision to have Apple customers purchase thewatch on-line instead of waiting in line for it?
LOL!!!
I think there's a lot more to her role at Apple than simply that. There's all those new staff T- shirts to iron, for example.
Didn't she get like 10's of millions of dollars in stocks or something?
Yeah those T-shirts shows that her input is really paying off...
But seriously, in keeping with her vision of Apple going more upscale and class conscious I thought she would have dropped T-shirts for staff.
Perhaps talk to the people who handle wardrobe for Downton Abbey for direction on the matter.
They are walking a fine line since they don't want to be too stuffy. They won't be as dressed up as someone working in the Burberry store, but the darker blue looks a bit more conservative.
One thing that does surprise me is why they kept the midnight PDT launch time, rather than a more reasonable time, such as 7:00am PDT. The kind of people who don't like waiting in lines also probably don't like getting up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning (more than half the US) to get one before the pre-orders are all sold out, either. Granted, it's a more reasonable time in Europe and Asia, but then they could have staggered the order times.
This. My parents live in one of the nicer Baltimore city neighborhoods, but they still had packages stolen off the front stoop around Christmas. My mom works for a small non-profit out in the suburbs and was told she could no longer have personal packages shipped there. My dad's only occasionally in his office in DC when he's not traveling. Good thing they're not into the Apple Store hype. My mom just got an iPhone 5s last month at the Verizon store to replace her dumb phone.
I'm just disappointed that I may never be able to experience an Apple product launch with the line waiting and anticipation. The night I spent waiting outside my local Barnes & Noble for the seventh Harry Potter book was the highlight of high school for me. It was a pretty smooth system with numbered wristbands we picked up earlier in the day. Not like midnight movie premiers where you get there 3+ hours before with your ticket and mash together with everyone else to try to get the best seats. But with Millennials getting older and more "adult", maybe we're moving past that kind of lifestyle.
I will admit that doing store pickup for my late-2013 rMBP was about the easiest process once I got my mom through the payment process (trying to explain where to find things on a website over the phone is a bit of a challenge). As soon as I got the email that my order was ready, I hopped in the car, drove the 45 minutes to my nearest store in Leawood, KS, and walked out with my new make in 10 minutes less than an hour before the store closed. I'd be perfectly content to order my next iPhone online in the same manner and walk out with it on launch day after the crowd has thinned. That's assuming I can navigate a Verizon upgrade without the account holder (my dad) physically present. It took no time at all in the Verizon store when I got my iPhone 5.
They know the capacities of their stores, and realize that they couldn't handle a huge launch in store with a sales process as complicated as it is for watches. It will become more normal as they get a better sense of demand, but I don't really see how much more they could have improved it this time around. Surely they learned things when they rolled out the reservation system in China, which they did specifically because the lines there were getting violent at times.
Will some people be turned off by the sales process? Sure, but some people would be turned off if the news on April 24th was filled with stories about how a "riot" broke out on Fifth Avenue or in London when they ran out of stock, or someone waited 8 hours and the person in front of them got the last one.
Attachments
I've always purchased direct online.
I detest Apple Stores based on experiences I've had with them and will only visit on rare occasions.
I'm sure there are many many thousands like me Angela, so this is not exactly new thinking nor thinking different
I detest Apple Stores based on experiences I've had with them and will only visit on rare occasions.
I'm sure there are many many thousands like me Angela, so this is not exactly new thinking nor thinking different
Earlier this year when the brighter blue shirts leaked people complained that they looks too much like the shirts best buy employees wear. I swear some will complain about anything.
I've always purchased direct online.
I detest Apple Stores based on experiences I've had with them and will only visit on rare occasions.
I'm sure there are many many thousands like me Angela, so this is not exactly new thinking nor thinking different
I think we'll see more changes to the stores, as well. The more they emphasize "try it here, buy it online" the more they can get back to personal service in the stores themselves.
At this point with the iPhones they don't need to. With the watch I think they are trying to keep there from being lines in order to avoid being embarrassed if no lines form.
Their other reason probably is that they realize that for the iPhones the lines have become bad publicity since probably the majority of people in them are scalpers.
On the first point, that's possibly true. This obviously won't be as popular as an iPhone, and if "only" a few hundred showed up at Fifth Avenue it would be reported as a "flop." That said, I think demand will be fairly brisk at first. I'm more interested in what demand will be 6 months from now.
On the second point, you are absolutely right. There were even videos that went viral last year showing "typical" iPhone lines loaded with people paying cash.
except that in my experiences over the past 15 years or so, staff have either been pushy or downright rude, especially when they're busy.
appointments seem to count for little.
a friend travelled 50 kms to a store for an appointment - arrived 3 minutes late after trouble finding a parking spot and was told to make another appointment for another day as there were no spots left.
3 minutes!!
she was very cross.
Steve would be horrified
You can tell Ahrendts comes from a brick-and-mortar retail background. In that world, lineups are a bad thing. But Apple has successfully milked the "new product release day lineup" phenomenon for consistent media coverage.
The fact that she wants to discourage people from lining up also suggests that she doesn't really understand the Apple customer, in particular, the Apple customer who lines up on release day. They want to be the first. They want it NOW. They don't want to order it at home and wait for it to be delivered.
Even if Apple plans to allow pre-orders on every new product and have them delivered IN VOLUME on release day, i can't see the lineups going away any time soon. People do it for the experience.
The fact that she wants to discourage people from lining up also suggests that she doesn't really understand the Apple customer, in particular, the Apple customer who lines up on release day. They want to be the first. They want it NOW. They don't want to order it at home and wait for it to be delivered.
Even if Apple plans to allow pre-orders on every new product and have them delivered IN VOLUME on release day, i can't see the lineups going away any time soon. People do it for the experience.
I think she understands tech just fine, but she understands that capturing the sale through all available channels is also important.
Apple should be trying to bolster product movement through the app and website.
It just makes sense to do so.
so now i just wait online?
i just tried to make a genius bar appointment for my malfunctioning brand new iphone 6 at one of the 7 stores in my local area (i live in LA) and nothing is available until Saturday/Sunday latest.
not a fan. I used to be able to make same day genius appointments or at the very least next day...
one more strike against the direction of this behemoth of a company..
i just tried to make a genius bar appointment for my malfunctioning brand new iphone 6 at one of the 7 stores in my local area (i live in LA) and nothing is available until Saturday/Sunday latest.
not a fan. I used to be able to make same day genius appointments or at the very least next day...
one more strike against the direction of this behemoth of a company..
What percentage of those people do it for the experience versus do it to get a bit of money buying the phones for scalpers? At this point having lines full of scalpers and a few actual fans is not good publicity, and any attempts to stop the scalpers tend to get other people caught up as well and create bad publicity as well.
except that in my experiences over the past 15 years or so, staff have either been pushy or downright rude, especially when they're busy.
appointments seem to count for little.
a friend travelled 50 kms to a store for an appointment - arrived 3 minutes late after trouble finding a parking spot and was told to make another appointment for another day as there were no spots left.
3 minutes!!
she was very cross.
Steve would be horrified
Maybe that's why they brought in Ahrendts to make some changes. The stores have only been around 15 years, so some of your experiences are from the Steve Jobs era.
----------
However, if the Watch is to succeed long term, they will need to go beyond the normal tech crowd, which simply hasn't shown that much interest in wearables. If the tech crowd were enough to sustain demand (and not just be a flash in the pan), Samsung would have seen more success with the Gear. They sell 100 million Galaxy and Note phones per year to the same general demographic that buys iPhones.
Well we were told by staff not to form a line for April 10th for the release of the new MacBook. And they said there won't be allowed one for the Watch when its released either. So I guess this is it. No more forming lines outside prior to release. Managers are saying 2 hours before store opening is the new policy.