I got together with some folks to stand in line for the Leopard release on Friday evening; we went camping in Victor outside the Apple Store Eastview. I wanted to jot down a few observations of the outing, and I’ll do so in no particular order.
It was fun, both for the event itself and to spend time outside the home with friends. (Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — Christen was stuck at home with Elijah.)
It’s perhaps not the best advertising in the world to have a line 200-some odd deep waiting to get into your store. It becomes a curiosity for others in the mall and a hassle for patrons who just wanted to saunter in but are turned away. Amplify this with a line that is predominantly composed of white males, aged 20 to 60 — and the store suddenly looks a lot less hip.
Those of you who’ve stood in lines for Apple conference or trade show keynote addresses know of what I speak. Though this crowd was less like WWDC’s and a little more eclectic like Macworld’s, it was still a turn-off for the teenage girl iPod demographic.
Speaking of which, some young girls walked up to others in the line behind us, asked what the line was for, and then rolled their eyes and stalked off in revulsion.
Unlike any other retailer I can think of in this situation — a captive audience of 200 people waiting to rush through your doors — Apple didn’t have any other promotions in force. Just a new operating system. They didn’t give anyone 5 or 10% off a new computer, or a discount on an iPod, or any other kind of bundling incentive, as far as I could tell.
Frankly, most of the people I saw walking in played with a computer for a few moments and walked out again with only their free t-shirts. And then a few jumped back at the end of the line for another t-shirt.
Did Apple even make any money on this, after staffing up, closing the store to prep, and then giving out the freebies? It looked like they wanted you to go in and out immediately … preferably with your copy of Leopard, sure, but they weren’t exactly encouraging anyone to get more than that.
The Eastview store has been totally reconfigured. I haven’t been there since its remodelling, but the Genius Bar is in the back now, where the checkout used to be. Now, there’s no obvious checkout so I assume they’ll be heavily using those hand scanners from now on. Overall, it was hard to get a feel for the changes since the Leopard checkout line was roped off through the center of the floor.
The iPod touch, which I saw in person for the first time, is really thin. The outer ring on its face is beveled in a black material, maybe metal, that appears similar in style to the sloping edges on the new iPod classics and nanos.
The store employee I chatted with about the Mac Pro didn’t have much help to offer me about the optional BTO RAID card. In fact, he was just looking up the details on the Apple Store Web site, thankyouverymuch. But, he was pleasant while he was performing that admirable service, and I’ll give him credit that he was genuinely trying to be helpful.