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.
We are giving out water
91–100 of 112 posts
Re: We are giving out water
#92Apple 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 f…
> 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.
Re: We are giving out water
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ahe…
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.
Considering the news with the antenna, that bumper should be an easy sell even by hawkers going down the line with clipboards.
Re: We are giving out water
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 d…
You mean, the phones that you can do video chat on, with someone else who owns one?
Re: We are giving out water
#95I 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.
It doesn't really work for everyone.
Re: We are giving out water
#96I 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.…
You forgot about coupling their premium products to some best-in-class services: the iTunes Music Store and App Store.
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.
Re: We are giving out water
#97It 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 s…
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.
Re: We are giving out water
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Also remember that some of these may be developers, so getting it before their customers could be very important to their bank account. I'd pay somebody to wait for me in the queue, then.
But maybe those guys were paid..
Re: We are giving out water
#99I 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.…
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.
Re: We are giving out water
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Please post your blog post here (on HN) when it's ready.