How exactly would a Friday 5pm sale time maximize lines? Most people work until at least 5, if not until 6, on Friday nights. And then they go out to the movies or to have drinks to celebrate the end of the week, etc. At the very least, they go out for a nice dinner.
So from a retail perspective, 5pm Friday is the WORST possible time to try and drum up media attention at a retail store. LITERALLY NO ONE IS WATCHING THE NEWS ON FRIDAY NIGHT. Friday night is the most likely time that people have more enticing activities planned.
So in order to generate a line of people outside of an Apple store for a 5 pm launch, Apple is asking people to 1) take off work that day or else leave early. And 2) forgo their usual end of the week revelry in order to stand outside on a March evening and buy a gadget that they could easily buy the next afternoon when they wake up from their hangover.
Furthermore, Andy Ihnatko brought up an even better point on MacBreak Weekly. The notion that Apple “needs” the media attention for this iPad launch so badly that it would have to inconvenience users just to catch a few extra minutes on Friday night’s newscast is ludicrous. Apple always gets good press, and this year’s iPad 2 launch will be no exception. The only thing Apple needs to do with this launch is make sure that it goes as smoothly as possible. In a nutshell, Apple wants the maximum number of people to go home happy that night with an iPad in hand.
That’s how you get people to show up next time.
So whatever the real reason for the no-preorder policy, I’m 100% certain that IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LINES. There will be lines. There would have been lines, no matter what Apple did. The lines are irrelevant to Apple.
Just because some people would have preordered instead of waiting in line does not mean that EVERYONE would have preordered instead of waiting in line. A lot of us LIKE standing in line. We’re weird that way. The launch of the iPhone 4 on AT&T and the first iPad proved that.
The Verizon launch was a fluke. A fluke that was aided by numerous factors that led to fewer sales. It’s not that Apple sold millions of iPhone 4s to Verizon customers, but they all preordered. It’s that Apple simply sold fewer phones for that launch.
How do I know this? Because Apple hasn’t told us how many Verizon phones were sold. That’s your sure-fire indication that sales weren’t enormous. Of course, they could well have been better than Apple’s expectations, but perhaps the expectations were low for a nine-month old phone that is sure to be replaced in a few months. Who knows? What I do know is that iPad 2’s launch will be a lot more like the iPad 1 launch than the Verizon iPhone launch.
Let’s face it: day 1 buyers are nerds like me. They enjoy the social aspect of hanging around with a bunch of like-minded people in giddy anticipation. There’s an energy to a line that’s undeniable. That isn’t going to change for this product.
My guess is that either my original theory is correct, that Apple wants in-person shoppers because they are more likely to be up-sold to a Smart Cover and other accessories, OR that the increase in locations selling the iPad this time around (Best Buy, Target, Verizon Stores, etc.) made keeping the appropriate amount of stock in each store too difficult to manage ALONG WITH fulfilling preorder shipments. We’ll never know for sure, but I trust that smart guys like Ron Johnson and Tim Cook made an assessment based on available resources and decided that this was the way to go. This was the way to maximize USER SATISFACTION.
So if it sounds inconvenient to some people who prefer to stay home on launch day, that’s unfortunate. But rest assured, Apple didn’t sell you out in order to make a cheap grab for media attention. That’s the sort of thing Microsoft, or Samsung would do.
