Apple loves this stuff. I was in an Apple store a few weeks ago to buy a gift. Aside from the "Genius" Bar, there were five employees helping customers and another two employees fiddling with boxes and displays. There were seven or eight customers ahead of me impatiently waiting to be served. There was a lot of ostentatious yawning, foot-tapping, and watch-checking. In the ten minutes I stayed, the employees on the floor managed to serve and check out four customers. Seven employees, ten minutes, four transactions. That isn't incompetence. That's policy. They're inflating perceptions of their popularity and their importance. If someone can see you without waiting, you aren't important. If you hurry for someone, that makes them more important than you, so don't do it.
My question is, is this ever a good idea? People put up with it because they have to, but what happens when they don't? (I walked out of the store, but I bought the damn iPad online anyway, because it's a Father's Day gift, and I can't tell my mom and sister we're not getting it just because Apple ticks me off. They've never heard of Android, plus my dad is a perpetual noob who needs the most mainstream device available.)
Would people buy less if they were well-treated? That seems to be the premise. Or maybe not -- maybe the abuse is not intended to maximize sales, but rather to intensify loyalty among hard-core fans. That might make sense: banking loyalty and prestige to prepare for a contingency when they have to move clearly inferior products.
By way of comparison, the Wii launch in my part of Japan was organized with kanban cards and high school student labor. Three cashiers, two pickers, one manager with a clipboard of all reservations and sole responsibility for bowing. They blew through a hundred fifty transactions in 25 minutes. Toyota would have been proud... well, OK, Toyota would have said now do it in 24,but there would have been an edge of pride in it.
I was working in a Cincinnati bookstore for one of the Harry Potter book releases. I was dressed up as Sirius Black. I think I personally handed out about 250 books at the rate of 3 every 2 seconds, and I was one of only several. We had all of those kids out the door and the doors closed well before 1 am. The kids were entertained by planned activities, and we had the parents come up and pay to get a voucher well ahead of midnight. At the stroke of midnight, it was voucher-book, voucher-book in rapid succession.
It may be a little more complicated with the iPhone. They want to up-sell you a lot of accessories "do you need a bumper?" "how about a dock?" and then get you activated with at&t or whatever. I think it can be a fairly time intensive process.
I don't exactly have high efficiency standards for retail employees at the mall. What I saw was shocking even by those standards. What was most offensive was that not a single employee in the store, and I mean not a single one, was sensitive to the impatience of the customers. Looking at the body language of the people around me, I think the mood varied from "grumpy" to "murderous," but the employees were calm, happy, and unhurried. Just from a psychological point of view, that seemed unnatural and offensive. Or sociopathic. When someone who's been waiting forever, during lunchtime (hence probably on their lunch hour,) marches determinedly up to a sales guy and tells him precisely what he want to buy, and the sales guy, instead of immediately getting the guy what he wants, starts demoing the product for him, and the guy says, "Uh huh, uh huh, yeah, I've got one already," in a pissed-off tone of voice, at that point the sales guy should, you know, give up and just sell the guy what he wants. To keep stalling and trying to make chit-chat, maybe start demoing a slightly different product, and to do all this calmly and slowly and beatifically, is offensive. Or sociopathic. Take your pick. A whole store full of guys acting like that, I don't know. I just don't know. Maybe it's the culture of the individual store, but I can't imagine it happening anywhere other than an Apple store.
I told my story to somebody today who said that a feeling of overflowing love and compassion combined with complete obliviousness to the needs others was more likely the result of recreational drugs shared at a morning staff meeting than a reflection of Apple policy. So perhaps I rushed to judgment.
> They're inflating perceptions of their popularity and their importance.
This is consistent with the reasoning behind naming their tech-support area the "Genius Bar" and the technicians "Geniuses".
When people call, say Dell, to complain about a laptop not working, they expect to talk to a clueless entry level technician. There is a bias for frustration. At the Apple Store, one has to make an "appointment", for the privileged of bringing forth your issue to a person with the corporate title of "Genius". People are less inclined to talk down to people who are important and smart.
In fairness to the Genius Bar, their standards for customer relations are higher than the typical support org. For example, Geniuses will get a mandatory review if they have received a low customer submitted questionnaire rating.
I haven't noticed this. I had to purchase a cable from an Apple Store, and I was approached by an Apple employee that had an iPhone with POS software and a credit card reader installed, and I was out of the store in a few minutes.
This is the Apple Store on Regent Street, London. It's massive, and it does £60m sales per annum - over £2k per square foot (http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/05/apples-regent-st...). It's the single most profitable store per square foot in the UK.
8 hours for a Leeds Festival ticket is borderline understandable. It's a possibly one-time event (for that particular lineup), and you can only get the ticket if you wait in line.
But standing in line 8 hours so that you can have twice the pixels on your phone a week before all your friends?
You see the same sort of thing and worse in new game console launches and (big) movie release dates. People camp out for days sometimes. A few hours is nothing, these Apple fans are either line-n00bs or flat out moderates compared to those.
Also remember that some of these may be developers, so getting it before their customers could be very important to their bank account.
Does driving or flying for hours to go on a holiday hint at emptiness? It's basically the same thing — putting up with a mostly unpleasant wait for an enjoyable experience — just the details of the fun time at the end are different.
(Incidentally: I have never waited in line for an iPhone. But I do wait in line for hours every year to see Joss Whedon at Comic-Con, so I understand why somebody would put up with an extended wait for something.)
Whatever man. That's an unfair and negative value judgment. Everyone's identity comes from somewhere. For some people it's from being part of the elite Geek crowd. For other people it's their sports team winning. For other people it's their business making millions of dollars.
Well, that's really just an unfair value judgment.
True, everybody's identity comes from somewhere. The question is, where they get it from? My identity tells me that waiting in line for 6-10 hours for an iPhone is ridiculous ... categorically rejecting it. Life's too short to derive meaning or identity from an iPhone. You shouldn't rationalize by arguing, "Everyone's identity comes from somewhere."
And it's a sad thing when someone's identity hinges upon his being part of the elite, his sports team winning or making lots of money. Those are things to enjoy, surely - but if they get to be cornerstones of your personality, it's time for a reality check.
Sure, that is the way life is for many people, but ... to think that Apple intentionally makes thousands of humans waste hours of their life doing something they hate.
A company that is not inherently evil would strive to make the consumer experience joyful and uplifting. But this ... reducing humans to masochistic consumer zombies with large bladders instead of brains - it's a waste of life.
It's just as sad when your identity hinges upon thinking you're not part of social groups you've imagined. But "masochistic consumer zombies with large bladders instead of brains" is RAD hyperbole. My 12 year old self just wrote that on my trapper keeper with a sharpie next to the A inside of a circle.
OK, this discussion is way too big for HN, and I'm writing up a massive blog post explaining it, but you really can't blame Apple because the problem is way bigger than that.
Just trying to understand. I could understand if the queuing was fun, but as that doesn't seem to be the case?
Yes, for 10 hours queuing, you get to be cooler than everybody else for 10 minutes, until the rest of the world has received their iPhones in the mail?
I think the un-funness in this case stems from people not expecting the line in the first place. Movie-campers sometimes literally camp out in line, tent and all. It's a different experience entirely.
Maybe it is the same thing as football fans (soccer) then? I could never relate to them, either. Although I admit it seems to work - they have fun, get drunk, make friends, travel. But it all seems fake in the end (they are not good at sports, just because their team is good at sports. Their friendships would probably not last if they left the "club").
Back when I was younger, I'd camp out with friends because it was part of the experience. I mean, sure I was excited and eager, but camping out and getting home at 2AM and playing something nobody's played before until noon the next day with your close friends was great fun.
I'd argue the inherently social component available in game consoles makes it (potentially; depends on the person or group of people) a little different from the phones, which are purely personal.
I think there's a lot more depth to the social interactions of a party game with up to four then a video chat that only involves two. I just can't see anyone staying up from 2 am to noon on video chat, but someone with Monkey Ball and 3 friends could do this easily.
Your logic is spot-on. It seems like so many young intelligent people would question the opportunity cost of all that time lost versus the gain of having the iPhone a few days early?
Did the UK not have pre-order for delivery? I had my iPhone 4 a day earlier than they were released in the store, and I never had to wait in any line or even leave the house.
They don't deliver to hotels, so the guy from Norway was out of luck. Some ppl don't have bank cards or don't trust e-commerce security. Some don't want their partners/parents to know they bought a new expensive toy.
When the first iPhone came out I was a senior in college - one of my buddies stood in line like a schlub and bought the damn thing as soon as it became available. A month later, I actually watched him try to pick up some girls in a bar by showing it off. I died a little inside.
You see the same thing with people who pays thousands for the phone on ebay, rather than wait a few weeks. I too think it is a little crazy, and do not understand it. Some people like to wait in front of apple, I guess. For me, the free water and cofee was not enough.
You hit on the key word right there in your 1st sentence: precious.
It's precious to some people. Goes beyond rational or objective value. Gets into emotional experiences, and heck even just having fun, getting a thrill, the excitement. That's why they feel they cannot wait, or choose not to wait.
There's also precious in the Gollum sense:
"What has the nasty Bagginses done with my preciouses?"
Well, personally, I agree with the article's interpretation of events... but: does anybody else see the irony inherent to The Economist, of all publications, complaining about something like this?
I mean, this is the free market at work, right? Nobody's forcing these people to queue for hours. Both Apple and its customers are making choices based on costs and benefits. Apple, on the one hand, apparently sees financial benefit to treating a certain segment of its customer base like crap. Those same customers have apparently decided that being treated shabbily is worth getting the new shiny a little bit sooner than their friends.
If that ain't capitalism, I don't know what is. Seems like it'd be right up The Economist's alley...
The picture couples well with the revealing self-description in the first sentence: 'like a dutiful customer'. As a _customer_, you have no _duty_ to the vendor. Oh, wait, it's Apple we're talking about. Never mind. :-)
Also, by forcing people to invest time like this, they build customer loyalty. The customers don't want to admit that they were wrong.
On the other hand, this could backfire if someone gets fed up. It only builds loyalty if the customers tolerate this abuse -- because then they need to explain to themselves why they did.
I think it would be a difficult task to organize reserved units by time, as the author is implying. What would Apple do? Give you a specific time block of when to be there? Would it be ok to be late by 1 minute due to traffic? Would 20 people be in a particular time block, giving a little buffer. What happens with everyone is a minute late? It takes time to activate these things too, so what about delays in previous customer's transactions that push your appointments back? Ever been to your doctor after six peep ahead of you were late or their appointments ran long?
It's just not sustainable to schedule hundreds of thousands of people into time slots in a given day. Perhaps they could schedule you into thirds of the day, but then people will bitch and moan about that. They could schedule people for specific days, but then you know people will complain about that.
The reality is, most people who want it on launch day, want it on launch day, and as early as possible. They want to wait in a fair FIFO queue, however long it takes to get through it. This is evidenced by multiple years of multiple products delivered by Apple. A few people will complain about everything. If the guy wants one so bad, he can buy one on eBay, or better coordinate his travel arrangements ahead of time, right?
In all sincerity and open-mindedness, how is this Apple's problem when the world wants to buy their product all at once (even if they do emit mind control to cause it)?
This reminds me of a scene several years ago during the PS3 release. At the Metreon in San Francisco, outside the PlayStation Store that has since closed, Sony was handing out not only bottled water but hamburger meals, real hamburger meals, not fast food, to people waiting to purchase PS3s. I wasn't in that line, but I happened to be walking by the Metreon on the way to my destination, which I don't quite recollect. Pretty incredible to juxtapose that with an event like this.
isn't that due to actual full capacity (restaurants) and fire code (clubs)? i don't think either one has the ability to schedule their customers throughout the day or take another approach to reservations.
Clubs will keep a line out the door by instructing the bouncer to slowly let people in or to randomly decide to not let anyone in at a given time (when the line is not long enough).
Restaurants will do this by having the waiting area artificially small. Restaurants where you order before you sit down will have the cash registers near the door, and understaff the registers.
Why does Apple get blamed for this? It's the AT&T signup process that takes all the time. I queued for 2 hours for the first iPhone but I walked right into the store for my iPad. The only difference was the lack of AT&T in the process.
I'm really confused as to why people are not getting this.
Pre-Order: You paid for a phone. You had the option to have it shipped to your door (most people did this obviously). You could go pick it up if you want but why would you do that, anyone who has paid attention to Apple releases for the past 4 years knows the lines are insanely long. Thus the shipping option.
Reservation: You haven't paid Apple a DIME. You simply reserved a phone. You get to show up and wait for a phone on a first come, first serve basis, but you are guaranteed to get one if you do. You know what you're getting yourself into. The long lines were a result of each activation taking anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes because of the micro-sim change.
Walk-Ups: You didn't pre-order and you didn't get a reservation in time. You decided to camp over night for a phone. You obviously knew exactly what you were getting yourself into.
As for the waiting in line experience itself: Apple extended store hours into the wee hours to fill all reserved phones. Apple paid for free drinks and free food to be handed out the entire time. I could have eaten a dozen chicken sandwiches if I had wanted them. I met a bunch of cool people while waiting, it wasn't a bad experience in any way other then the actual waiting... which I knew was the case when I got in my car to head to the Apple store.
Apple didn't force anyone to wait in a line. This is absolutely absurd.
Hm, if I was an iPhone developer I would try to create an app for that. Organizing the queuing, I mean. Could we come up with some self organizing numbering scheme (assuming the shop doesn't collaborate, and everybody in the queue already has an iPhone (pre-4), which seems reasonable)?
A problem could be that people would forget to check in once they had their turn at the counter, so maybe it would have to be some kind of dead man's button ("yes, I am still queueing").
People who reserved this item know from previous experience they were most likely going to wait in line for it.
They knew.
I'm not saying that Apple couldn't have handled this differently, but there is a value that was attached to this item by the people in line. The cost of time lost/waiting in line for hours was something factored in to the value they were expecting for their iphone.
Some of the more pragmatic and practical types scoff and write articles about how much all horrible lines are going to affect Apple's reputation (and bottom line), yet history has and will prove them wrong. Did the horrible lines for the iPhone 2G affect the sales of the 3G? The 3Gs, the iPad? It did, positively.
> People who reserved this item know from previous
> experience they were most likely going to wait in
> line for it.
I haven't followed previous launches, but were customers reserving their iPhones during this launches too? It seems really odd to me that as the author stated, Apple knew the number of people that had reserved their phone in advance. They can't claim that they "didn't know" how many people would turn up on launch day. They could easily have tried to design a way to better facilitate people getting their phones, or at the bare minimum tell people beforehand that they are expecting there to be long lines.
> Did the horrible lines for the iPhone 2G affect
> the sales of the 3G? The 3Gs, the iPad? It did,
> positively.
The article states that all of the press that Apple gets from this is good for them, but bad for their customers. So I don't see how you are contradicting the article here.
Ironically, apple is actually one of the few companies out there that has licensed one click purchasing from Amazon. (everyone waiting in line, btw, could have chosen to just have their phone shipped to them)
> (everyone waiting in line, btw, could have chosen
> to just have their phone shipped to them)
True, but I think most of those people felt that they would just be able to walk in and pick it up since they had a reservation. Handing out reservations implies that Apple has set one aside, just for you. You just have to walk in and get it.
No, not everyone. Apple like to have some stock at the stores, they often stop selling them online. Some people don't have credit cards. Postal service doesn't go to all parts of the UK. etc...
Completely with you. LOVE Amazon Prime. I just wish that they would let me make a default option to pay with my Amazon Payments balance. It's stupid and discourages me from spending more money. I've complained to their tech support, to developers on HN, yet nothing has been done about it as far as I know.
I pre-ordered mine for shipment from the local AT&T store (would have done it online, but the web site was unusable on pre-order day). It was waiting for me when I got home last night, all I had to do was charge it, activate it and sync it.
This time, it was just luck that I decided not to ask for an in-store appointment. But, next time I'll be sure to take the free shipping FTW.
I just had an epiphany. Here's what I'm going to do when I need to make a critical decision about how to operate my business. First, I'll spend days doing market research to develop a keen sense of what would be the right and fair thing to do to make my customers happy. Then I'll throw that out and do whatever I think Apple would do.
Folks - waiting in line in front of an apple store is part of the experience (I am standing 3 hours back right now in palo alto.). Half of the fun is launch day socializing, enjoying the spectacle, etc...
Seriously, if I didn't want to wait in line, I would have just had them ship me my iPhone. Zero wait.
There's also something to be said about how the more effort you spend attaining something, the more valuable it becomes (e.g. the psychology behind hazing in fraternities).
So Apple gets free marketing AND increased loyalty. Hurray.
I am surprised that nobody sees here a recipe for downfall : Apple is a very incompetent company when it comes to product massification. This is the most anti-Henry Ford strategy possible: overpriced premium products for a cult-like base of customers. They sell gadgets like Louis-Vuitton sells handbags and Prada sells shoes. And that's exactly the strategy they followed with the Mac and got them cornered in a niche. I wonder how long will it take until Dell, Asus or EeePc eats their lunch with a cheap Android.
That's not Apple's strategy though. They'd rather be a luxury product with higher profit margins than sell tons and tons of devices. These queues enhance the image of being "out of reach" for some people, and increase the exclusive appeal.
I don't like their strategy, but it clearly is working.
Sorry but those are not best in class. iTunes doesn't play nicely with windows and there is no way to use my Ipod as an usb device, something that every single mp3 player I have even brought did.
Face it, Apple makes shiny things but they are crap.
In many similar situations people don't have reservations. Guaranteeing they receive a product requires them to be one of the first people through the door when the store opens. Taking reservations may have created the false impression that one could show up later in the day without the need to wait in a long line.
The other difference I can think of is that in similar situations the manufacturer and the retailer are two completely separate entities. It's more difficult for me to imagine getting angry at Nintendo because Best Buy is making me wait in line.
I don't really see the point in taking reservations if people are going to have to stand in line all day anyway.
Taking reservations may have created the false impression that one could show up later in the day without the need to wait in a long line.
I concur with you in everything you said, but I think it is important to remember that that impression was false only because Apple arranged it that way deliberately.
As others have stated, they knew the maximum number they could serve in a day and could have refused to reserve more than that, or made reservations for specific times of day and then ensured they had enough staff to cover those reservations.
If they truly got overwhelmed by surprise (say some employees got sick), they could have started handing out numbers so people could be free to walk away for a bit and return closer to time based on their number. Etc.
Replace phone with hotdog. I can bet you there is a place in Chicago that has lines out the door. I fail to comprehend how the type of device is relavent to this discussion.
It is pretty surprising that Apple hasn't been called on this cheap PR. Every person standing in line is being used as a stooge by Apple to get press, and the media always abides. This is the first article I've seen yet that points out this obvious exploitation of the Apple faithful.
It's positively archaic.
Just to be clear, as the article notes the people standing in line RESERVED a phone. They already have their spot. Apple makes them prove it by standing in line for 6 hours for the television cameras.
When the Motorola Droid was released, in comparison, I remember a lot of articles mocking the lack of lines. Yet somehow they sold 250,000 in the first week. It's kind of amazing what modern fulfillment processes can do, even if it doesn't lead to cult-like turnouts.
Analysts are saying Apple may sell 1.5 million iPhones in the first week. A bit more challenging than 250,000. Anyway when it comes to lines these people made a choice. Apple offered to ship it to their door. They may have actually got it a day earlier if they opted for delivery instead. Even if you preferred local pickup Best Buy's pre-orders were fulfilled by appointment. So these people all had choices. For whatever reason they wanted to line-up in front of an Apple store for 6 hours because they absolutely had to have this thing on launch day. No sympathy from me. If Apple is using them for PR they are willing pawns.
Ok, first of all, that's only a factor of six, not the orders of magnitude you seem to be implying.
And I don't think you can lay this at the feet of the people standing in line unless they were informed when they made their choice that choosing an Apple store would involve five to ten hour queuing outdoors. I'm guessing Apple didn't say that in the order form, in which case the "choice" was one about which they were uninformed, perhaps deliberately so, and Apple remains largely at fault.
Anyone know any studies on what makes people do this? How come a product (especially a particularly stupid one that's not much different than its analogues) gets so demanded before it comes out?
The iPhone 4 uses a microsim instead of regular sim cards. It takes some time to replace and transfer data to the new one - the whole process takes 15min per person, thus mindlowinly slow lines.
Oh, certainly not defending it. The knew how many people were coming well ahead of time. I live in Portland, there's only one little Apple store for all of downtown and the eastside - it was a nightmare.
My question is, is this ever a good idea? People put up with it because they have to, but what happens when they don't? (I walked out of the store, but I bought the damn iPad online anyway, because it's a Father's Day gift, and I can't tell my mom and sister we're not getting it just because Apple ticks me off. They've never heard of Android, plus my dad is a perpetual noob who needs the most mainstream device available.)
Would people buy less if they were well-treated? That seems to be the premise. Or maybe not -- maybe the abuse is not intended to maximize sales, but rather to intensify loyalty among hard-core fans. That might make sense: banking loyalty and prestige to prepare for a contingency when they have to move clearly inferior products.