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Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#591

Post by froggit »

tshaddox wrote: post #547
XorNot wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you get how insane this sounds as an experience though? I'm physically in the store, saying "just let me pay for your product so I can leave" and the default is to try and drag that interaction out? The existence of workarounds doesn't make it not stupid.

It doesn’t sound insane at all. Unless you’re paying cash, the transaction is going to be set up on a computer, the inventory is going to be checked on a computer, and the payment is going to be processed on a computer. And your smart phone is a computer. Why is it odd to expect it to be faster to ask someone else to do this process for you rather than you doing it yourself? It’s not like you need someone with extens…

>>Why is it odd to expect it to be faster to ask someone else to do this process for you rather than you doing it yourself?

That's not really the issue here. It's more that it's odd to ask someone else to do this process for you and they tell you to make an appointment and come back.

A potential customer is telling an apple store employee "I want to exchange my money for your goods. I need you to do the exact same thing as a high school kid at a part time job, take my money and give me the phone. I just want you to act like a proper brick and mortar store for 2 minutes dammit." To which the employee responds "I can't do that now be cause you don't have an appointment. When you come back withone, I'll be glad to take the 2 minutes that's needed to make that transaction."

The "insane" pat is that apple store employees, the purpose of which are ultimately to convince potential customers to give them money in exchange for apple stuff and facilitate the transfer of resources, are basically telling potential customers "I won't do my job where I take your money and give you apple stuff unless you have an appointment. You don't have one, no apple for you."

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#592

Post by travisgriggs »

ncallaway wrote: post #419
9735194 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Steve Jobs would have tolerated that bullshit. He understood the customer better than that. Actually, this was his main talent.

Right, that’s literally what cargo culting means. It’s making a surface level imitation of behaviors, without understanding the underlying reasons, hoping for the same effect. So maybe Jobs might have made experiences that looked superficially similar to this, but he would’ve done it in a manner that actually understood the customer.

How meta. It appears I’m guilty of cargo culting the phrase “cargo cult”, since I superficially use it to describe really any modern form of tech fad following, all in an attempt to be hip with “modern” terms.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#593

Post by travisgriggs »

efitz wrote: post #403
konschubert wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s just bad service, cargo culting the Steve Jobs Store move

I think it’s more than that; I suspect that they have pretty onerous internal store processes about inventory control and device transfer to minimize employee theft.

Or perhaps they know what Costco and Walmart and every other store knows: “Increased dwell time correlates to increased sales.” I suspect that waiting for the “Ferrari Experience” is a side show to the very real effect that the longer you spend in their stores, the higher affinity you will have for their products, during that visit or future visits.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#594

Post by nixass »

gizajob wrote: post #464
dcchambers wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apples pricing structure is also annoying nowadays too. As soon as one specs out and bumps a laptop, one suddenly finds that they may as well get a different laptop, ie once you bump up a MacBook Air, you may as well just buy a Pro, until all of a sudden your £999 purchase idea has turned into £3000 and a debate about AppleCare. Their pricing structure on basically all of their product lines is absolutely perfect f…

Well, it's not exactly perfect because I was in the mood to simply buy a basic Air, until I was pretty well talked out of it by sales staff, so instead of an easy £1099 in the till, in their attempt to turn that into £2500, they got £0. That isn't good business. Also, the tedium of nowadays knowing that all the products will be bumped in spec in 9-12 months means that instead of excitement, buyer's remorse has alread…

> savvy consumer

Bold from you to assume majority of Apple customers are savvy consumers

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#595

Post by bitwize »

Wait wat?

I get that the Vision Pro is expensive and near-useless for most users.

So was the Macintosh in 1984, which cost the equivalent of $7000 today adjusted for inflation. So yeah, two Vision Pros. With just 128 KiB of RAM, the original Macintosh didn't have the capacity to run the applications of the future everyone to run. But people knew it was the future... and if you had the scratch, you could go down to the store and buy one.

That's where Vision Pro should be. It should be on everyone's minds as obviously where computing is going, and you should be able to buy tomorrow's computing paradigm today -- so that when better products come in at lower price points, everybody's ready.

Shut up and take people's money, Apple.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#596

Post by p1esk »

isykt wrote: post #526
p1esk wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The last time I was there to buy an iphone they said: “Someone will help you in 30 minutes, let me put your name in the queue. Oh, and you have to go stand and wait in the corner. No, you cannot leave the store to get coffee, if you do you will lose your place in the queue.” I counted 14 workers and maybe 3x as many customers in the store, with at least 5 workers just standing around doing nothing.

It’s clever. They’re essentially hacking your attention by taking advantage of the fact that you already signaled you have money and are willing to spend it. Getting you in the store and putting the hardware in front of you is the hardest part, and you did that yourself. This is why people on a budget go to the grocery store with a list. The physical experience is designed to sell you more , and Apple has the margins…

Really? That experience was so bad I’m not sure I will ever go to an Apple store again.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#597

Post by jolux »

jimbob45 wrote: post #589
zmmmmm wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a totally different model of generating demand. They don't need marketing, because they have a completely captive audience of loyal apple fans who will easily saturate the first year (or even two years) of supply for this product. They are following Palmer Luckey's "Make people want it first model". Being supply limited, traditional marketing would only generate demand they can't satisfy. What they actually have…

Has this ever worked for a company where there were genuinely equal options available? Because you could say GMail but GMail was a better experience than literally every other provider at the time.

Everyone seems to say Vision Pro is better than everything else.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#598

Post by midoridensha »

luma wrote: post #565
CydeWeys wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a miserable experience! Meanwhile I had the opposite experience in a Google Store recently. I picked a phone case off the shelf in 10s, told the nearest employee I wanted to buy it, and he immediately whipped out a credit card scanner and I bought it right there in 30s. Didn't even need to go to the checkout counter or anything. It probably helps that that store is less crowded than the Apple store, but their tr…

There's gotta be a lesson here: if your customer is ready to hand you money, best you just go ahead and take it without further delay.

Is that the lesson though? It seems people are falling over themselves to buy stuff at Apple stores despite these annoying and awful experiences, and Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

It seems the lesson is to treat knowledgable customers like morons using patronizing staff and try to upsell them as much as you can, even if it makes them leave the store in disgust.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#599

Post by gcanyon »

hghid wrote: post #197

Slightly tangential rant, but is anybody else becoming frustrated with the process of buying Apple products in Apple stores? For me, it started with the Apple Watch - I knew which one I wanted and was ready just to head down and buy one, but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation on how to use the knob on the the side. Recently, I wanted to buy a new Phone. Again, I knew the one…

Strange -- none of my recent purchases at the Apple Store have involved more than your proposed ideal scenario. I wonder if it was chance, or...?

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#600

Post by cambaceres »

I’m neither a AR/VR enthusiast nor an Apple fanboy. Still, after looking at the presentation when Vision Pro was shown and reading about it I truly think the world will be obsessed by these devices. People will be even more addicted to it than they already are with the smartphones.
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