Many retail products are announced well in advance of their initial release. Large car shows, for example, show off upcoming year models in October and November, and you can't actually buy one until January or February. Movies are previewed well in advance of release. It's how many products are previewed, teased, etc...to build up customer anticipation.
In terms of actual "launch", Apple tends to sell many more initial units than other retailers. So after the announcement, launch day begins with online sales that need to be shipped to customers homes and businesses. Once those initial sales are delivered, the stores begin selling stock for people who want and need to see and demo the product first.
Prior to this approach, popular product launches meant people sleeping on sidewalks outside Apple stores (unsightly, disruptive to other businesses), squatters poaching tons of product to send overseas for inflated resale, and crowded stores which may have hindered the marketing and sale of other products besides the newly launched ones.
Focusing on online first deals with these issues. People who want orders as soon as possible can order online and wait for the shipping. Others can then go to the stores.
We'll all get used to it.
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Interesting (and plausible) take. I agree they're being deliberate and strategic. This may well be, at least partly, a motivation.
Different products have different nature. If you want more extreme examples, airplane are typically delivered years even decades after first announcement, theirs no point comparing different products. At least for MacBooks, I don't recall a more than one month wait time before it actually gets delivered.
And you think by online ordering you can reduce reselling and shipping products overseas? That is simply naive. Just think, one person can only buy two iPhones while waiting in line, and it's difficult to cut the line, and this is the most fair first come first serve, you can't cheat time. But by online ordering, on person can have multiple apple ids, and he may be able to buy tens, hundreds of iPhones for resell. And they can have cheating bots to fight for those limited launch day supplies, no way human can beat a automatic computer program.
Plus, if wait in line, you will have to pay your whole night for two iPhones, and probably you can earn something by selling them, many people won't feel it worth the night. But if online ordering? Just stay up at 1200 or 300 eastern time, you can potentially buy two, or more, iPhones and sell them for the same payback. Which would encourage reselling?
As for shipping them overseas, people in non-launch countries have no access to the line, so they can't fight against people here in the U.S., all they can do is buying from a few people who are reselling iPhones. But by ordering online, they have the same access to the online stores as we do, and now they are able to fight against us. Before, it's just people here in the U.S. Fighting for the supply, but by ordering online, the whole world is fighting for the same amount of supply. It's not gonna solve the problem, it's just gonna get it worse
The only way to reduce the reselling is to reduce the reselling market, that is to make sure everyone want one can buy one pretty soon, otherwise no matter what you do, there will always be a reselling
