Angela screwed up again...launched iPad with no accessories?!

[yalag]

I dont get the people here who are defending Angela. Read her actual title please.

Senior VP of Retail and Online Stores at Apple.

So tell me what exactly has she done for Retail and Online Stores that you find enjoyable since she started? Something that is done better than it was before. I can't think of a damn thing.

 

[PTVMan]

Angela screwed up again...launched iPad with no accessories?! Who would have thought that's a good idea, seriously? No pencil, no keyboard, plenty of iPads in stock. WTF

It's so cool that everyone here is on a first name basis with Ms. Ahrendts. It's silly to think that she has much control over manufacturing and logistics. Calm down and get some perspective.

 

[KPOM]

One of the major selling points of the iPad Pro is the Pencil. Without it, the Pro is just a really big iPad. What's the use-case for that? Earlier this week Tim Cook said he thought a lot of people would use the iPad Pro to replace their laptops. Really? Without a physical keyboard?

It is beyond credibility that Apple planned to release the iPad Pro without the Pencil being widely available. It's a screw-up, plain and simple. Ditto the keyboard case. If you try to order the iPad Pro on the UK site, they keyboard isn't even mentioned. It's not even an option. Yet, I'm sure they mentioned it at the keynote . . .

Apple is continuing to make great products, but their sales operation is mediocre. Luckily they literally have more money than they know what to do with. But large companies don't stay on top forever. Not if they squander their brand capital.

As for Ahrendts, it's not remotely clear to me what she's supposed to do and what she's actually done. How she's worth millions to Apple is beyond me. I don't see a slick sales operation. At all.

It's not the sales operations deciding not to release accessories. It's production not having enough of them available. Of course Apple Retail would love to have accessories. It's an easy upsell. Given the lack of availability Apple either needed to delay the launch entirely, or launch without accessories. Not everyone needs or wants the Pencil or Keyboard, so they went with the latter.

Maybe now it's obvious why the Pencil isn't an included accessory. We'd be waiting until January for the iPad Pro to launch.

I dont get the people here who are defending Angela. Read her actual title please.

Senior VP of Retail and Online Stores at Apple.

So tell me what exactly has she done for Retail and Online Stores that you find enjoyable since she started? Something that is done better than it was before. I can't think of a damn thing.

For starters, she undid the damage that John Browett did. Personal Pickup has been expanded. The retail website is now more smoothly integrated with the main website, and the Apple Store app experience has improved.

Didn't she receive some compensation to make up for what she lost leaving Burberry?

Yes, she walked away from $37 million that Burberry was going to pay her. Apple made up the difference. Plus, most of that $70 million vests over 10 years.

 

[KPOM]

.

 

[AdonisSMU]

It was with the in store pick up confirmation.l is the promise making the claims that they would be all available at the same time a stronger argument. To defend the "we didn't say EVERY Apple Watch would be available" just makes defenders sound gullible.

Show me where it says all items were available for pickup at the store. I know I looked. they promised the iPad would be available in store and nothing else. In fact I didn't even get the option for in store pick up with the other items.

 

[nicegoogly]

It was

Show me where it says all items were available for pickup at the store. I know I looked. they promised the iPad would be available in store and nothing else. In fact I didn't even get the option for in store pick up with the other items.

my damn email which said it.

 

[Rogifan]

It's not the sales operations deciding not to release accessories. It's production not having enough of them available. Of course Apple Retail would love to have accessories. It's an easy upsell. Given the lack of availability Apple either needed to delay the launch entirely, or launch without accessories. Not everyone needs or wants the Pencil or Keyboard, so they went with the latter.

Maybe now it's obvious why the Pencil isn't an included accessory. We'd be waiting until January for the iPad Pro to launch.

But why the delays? I know that's not Ahrendts fault but it seems to be happening all too frequently the last few years.

 

[KPOM]

But why the delays? I know that's not Ahrendts fault but it seems to be happening all too frequently the last few years.

Hence the reason I think Apple needs a full-time COO and not just an SVP of Operations. As long as the iPhone supplies are plentiful it's hard to completely fault the supply chain management, but Apple needs to get better with its other product lines. The MacBook was the most egregious example, IMO, even more so than the Watch. The Watch was a brand new product line, while the MacBook was an expansion of an existing line with reasonably knowable demand.

 

[Markiie]

I dont get the people here who are defending Angela. Read her actual title please.

Senior VP of Retail and Online Stores at Apple.

So tell me what exactly has she done for Retail and Online Stores that you find enjoyable since she started? Something that is done better than it was before. I can't think of a damn thing.

Not to mention she was hired with a 40 million dollar in stock bonus plus 30 something in cash on top. 70 plus million dollars for her to come in and change nothing. Must be nice.

Tim, if you're reading, I'll do the same and you can knock 2 zeros.

 

[cmascatello]

I have to concur that these launches have been mostly problematic for the past few years. That said, the 6s/6s+ launch was much smoother than the 6/6+ from the year prior. Using the app has proven to be the key -- too many service/browser anomalies when trying to refresh Safari/Firefox/IE.

For the first time ever, I emailed Tim Cook late yesterday to express frustration as a buyer and shareholder. I'm on the lucky side and have a 5-7 day quote for accessories on my order. Somewhat surprisingly, I received a call from Apple Corporate earlier this AM in response to the email and the rep was apologetic and asked for my opinion on what they could do and she promised to keep an eye on my order. My main suggestion was to pull back the curtain a little bit and acknowledge the issue (personal letter from the "top", similar to the Maps/Forstall handling) with some level of detail (many scenarios listed in this thread seem possible) and a commitment to improve.

Right now, they are not controlling the narrative around these launches. It is basic PR 101.

 

[Rogifan]

Hence the reason I think Apple needs a full-time COO and not just an SVP of Operations. As long as the iPhone supplies are plentiful it's hard to completely fault the supply chain management, but Apple needs to get better with its other product lines. The MacBook was the most egregious example, IMO, even more so than the Watch. The Watch was a brand new product line, while the MacBook was an expansion of an existing line with reasonably knowable demand.

What's the difference between COO and SVP Operations? Isn't Jeff Williams basically doing the COO job right now? Maybe he's just not as good at it as Cook was. Or maybe Cook needs to be more focused on that and less on social/political issues.

I have to concur that these launches have been mostly problematic for the past few years. That said, the 6s/6s+ launch was much smoother than the 6/6+ from the year prior. Using the app has proven to be the key -- too many service/browser anomalies when trying to refresh Safari/Firefox/IE.

For the first time ever, I emailed Tim Cook late yesterday to express frustration as a buyer and shareholder. I'm on the lucky side and have a 5-7 day quote for accessories on my order. Somewhat surprisingly, I received a call from Apple Corporate earlier this AM in response to the email and the rep was apologetic and asked for my opinion on what they could do and she promised to keep an eye on my order. My main suggestion was to pull back the curtain a little bit and acknowledge the issue (personal letter from the "top", similar to the Maps/Forstall handling) with some level of detail (many scenarios listed in this thread seem possible) and a commitment to improve.

Right now, they are not controlling the narrative around these launches. It is basic PR 101.

Sometimes it feels like amateur hour and that's sad to see. Why are these accessories delayed and why is there no official response from Apple about it. Heck just a note to Dalrymple or somone saying "we're working on getting these in customers hands as quickly as possible" would be a positive step.

 

[KPOM]

What's the difference between COO and SVP Operations? Isn't Jeff Williams basically doing the COO job right now? Maybe he's just not as good at it as Cook was. Or maybe Cook needs to be more focused on that and less on social/political issues.

Reporting lines and inclusion in the C-suite. Tim Cook has actually encouraged a lot more collaboration than Steve Jobs did, and when viewed objectively the launches under Tim Cook have improved considerably until this year. Remember it took 74 days to ship 1 million iPhones, and when the iPad 2 launched there were long lines vs. the iPad 4 where there were no lines (and yet the iPad 4 sold more at launch). However, now that they have gotten iPhone launches down pretty smoothly they need to focus more on the other products. They may need to do better market research beforehand. That would actually be Phil Schiller's responsibility.

Looking at supplies, it seems that Apple underestimated demand for the cellular iPad Pro. It uses the same baseband as the iPhone 6/iPad Air 2/iPad mini 4 (and not the newer iPhone 6S), so supply shouldn't be the issue there. We don't know for sure whether the shortage of keyboards and Pencils is a function of underestimating demand or not having supply, but since they launched to 2-week shipment times (that have slipped to 4-5 weeks), I'm guessing it's a supply issue.

 

[Aluminum213]

Tim Cook's Apple

 

[Rogifan]

Reporting lines and inclusion in the C-suite. Tim Cook has actually encouraged a lot more collaboration than Steve Jobs did, and when viewed objectively the launches under Tim Cook have improved considerably until this year. Remember it took 74 days to ship 1 million iPhones, and when the iPad 2 launched there were long lines vs. the iPad 4 where there were no lines (and yet the iPad 4 sold more at launch). However, now that they have gotten iPhone launches down pretty smoothly they need to focus more on the other products. They may need to do better market research beforehand. That would actually be Phil Schiller's responsibility.

Since Apple doesn't have many executives with c-level titles I'm not sure it really matters whether Williams is COO or SVP Operations. Something just isn't right though. It's one thing for a product to sell out quickly because of huge demand or initial supply constraints. But to have a product basically 'launch' backordered 4-5 weeks?

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Well Apple Store called me today and said my keyboard arrived, and that my pencil will be in tomorrow. So tomorrow looks to be the day to check on pencils.

 

[AppleWes]

iPad Prosumer by itself has a higher non-return probability than with the keyboard and pencil accessories and the reason they were intentially delayed beyond return period.

Source?

I might be misunderstanding your post- but it seems like the iPad Pro by itself would be a higher return, than "non-return" without the accessories.

Without the pencil or keyboard it comes across as just a larger iPhone/iPad/etc. I think people want the accessories to see how they'd really use the iPad Pro day to day.

 

[mi7chy]

I might be misunderstanding your post- but it seems like the iPad Pro by itself would be a higher return, than "non-return" without the accessories.

Keyboard is crappy and pencil is dependent on per app. Even navigating iOS menus don't fully support pencil and basic things like handwriting to text transcription is missing.

As a tablet only it's a strong product but as a hybrid with keyboard and pencil it's crappy against other hybrids like Surface Pro 4 or even 3.

 

[Atomic Walrus]

Keyboard is crappy and pencil is dependent on per app. Even navigating iOS menus don't fully support pencil and basic things like handwriting to text transcription is missing.

As a tablet only it's a strong product but as a hybrid with keyboard and pencil it's crappy against other hybrids like Surface Pro 4 or even 3.

They can sell this as a business laptop replacement product all they want, but the Pencil is an art tool first (pretty great for doing algebra if you're into that as well) and my limited use of it today says that their digitizer tech is beating Wacom Penabled (SP1&2,Note) and MS's N-trig (SP3 and SP4) by a large margin. People interested in that application are not going to care about how it behaves in menu interaction or whether it has text transcription.

The keyboard solution looks dumb, and the whole idea that you can make a laptop replacement without a cursor and trackpad is absurd to me, but leave the Pencil out of this business application nonsense.

 

[Rogifan]

The keyboard solution looks dumb, and the whole idea that you can make a laptop replacement without a cursor and trackpad is absurd to me, but leave the Pencil out of this business application nonsense.

Who says a keyboard attached to a tablet has to equal a laptop replacement?

 

[yalag]

Well Apple Store called me today and said my keyboard arrived, and that my pencil will be in tomorrow. So tomorrow looks to be the day to check on pencils.

Which store is this?

 

[Robnsn2015]

What really matters is whether these accessories will be available when the holiday shopping season starts in earnest. Consider this week a soft launch.

 

[fanta88]

This is a pretty sorry situation.

But, again, if you want to "blame" someone (even though I personally think that's a little wrong), blame Jeff Williams. He's ultimately the supply chain guy.

 

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Hence the reason I think Apple needs a full-time COO and not just an SVP of Operations. As long as the iPhone supplies are plentiful it's hard to completely fault the supply chain management, but Apple needs to get better with its other product lines. The MacBook was the most egregious example, IMO, even more so than the Watch. The Watch was a brand new product line, while the MacBook was an expansion of an existing line with reasonably knowable demand.

I would think it's easier to meet initial demand with a product that sells like the iPhone. Other products don't put up such huge numbers and the manufacturing capacity probably isn't there. Once the initial orders are filled, they have to start selling the product versus stock piling for weeks. it's the smarter business decision and only annoys the most rabid fans.

 

[KPOM]

I would think it's easier to meet initial demand with a product that sells like the iPhone. Other products don't put up such huge numbers and the manufacturing capacity probably isn't there. Once the initial orders are filled, they have to start selling the product versus stock piling for weeks. it's the smarter business decision and only annoys the most rabid fans.

Apple doesn't want to be "stuck" with lots of product that doesn't sell. That's what got Samsung into trouble over the last few years. They overproduced the Galaxy S line and had to resort to deep discounts when they didn't sell.

That said, not having the Pencil or Smart Keyboard when they were featured so prominently is a bit puzzling. Granted, Microsoft "sold out" of the Surface Pro and Surface Book without the stream of complaints, but Apple has more of a track record.

 

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Apple doesn't want to be "stuck" with lots of product that doesn't sell. That's what got Samsung into trouble over the last few years. They overproduced the Galaxy S line and had to resort to deep discounts when they didn't sell.

That said, not having the Pencil or Smart Keyboard when they were featured so prominently is a bit puzzling. Granted, Microsoft "sold out" of the Surface Pro and Surface Book without the stream of complaints, but Apple has more of a track record.

I agree. My only guess is existing lines can be modified to make the larger iPad but the pencil and keyboard are completely new making for a slower start and more potential quality issues.