They went to great lengths to avoid any communication about the theft taking place through Apple’s systems. They intentionally made me waste my time to come in person before telling me what would happen next.
I believe an Apple Store employee knew what orders were coming to the store and he wanted mine for himself, so he conspired with his friend to come pick it up for the price of a base model iMac.
I was recently interested in buying a maxed out Mac Pro for 50k+ but this experience has frightened me into avoiding expensive custom orders from Apple. Furthermore I don’t want to risk some rogue employee’s goons taking it to the next level by physically attacking me and robbing me on the way to my car. I’m probably not going to order a Mac Pro until I can find bodyguards to hire to escort me from the store through the shopping center and to my car. Which means I’ll probably never order a Mac Pro. None of this is sarcasm or hyperbole.
Are you listening, Tim? Probably not.
Over in the real world, the employees have spent 10 hours of their 12 hour shift explaining to the world's least-technically-adept people how to activate their Verizon service with 4 prepaid debit cards and a ripped $20 bill. Sixty times. While being yelled at. So... they might accidentally not notice you if you just come in and don't aggressively try to attract their attention. I do not blame them.
Oh, wait, that's the Apple Store Business team, isn't it?
Now, due to cost (although price has gone up for the stuff), the Geniuses are no longer trained at HQ, and there are now lower level “technicians” that can’t do much more than give you a new phone.
After Angela left Apple, the first thing they did were "revert" all the thing changes back to Steve Jobs era.
Basically Apple Retail has been a pile of mess since Steve passed away, not keeping up with the huge iPhone growth, and none of the Retail SVP had any idea what is best for Apple Store.
This is a hilarious problem to anyone who has been using polymer bills for nearly a decade.
Once it has a small tear, it very easily tears the rest of the way.
Once it is folded it never goes flat again.
They also feel really cheap.
I thought that at first.
Now the old ones feel really cheap to me. I guess you just get used to it
-Scandinavia
https://www.wired.com/2012/07/wikileaks-visa-blockade/
Blanket, universal surveillance as well as zero-burden-of-proof government point-and-click seizure/disablement is the cost.
You cannot have a free society without a payment system that the government or a few large banks do not have the ability to arbitrarily censor, even temporarily.
You can not communicate or organize anonymously (for example, for political organization or government corruption investigative journalism) when every payment you need to do so is logged as a matter of course. These activities are not common, but essential to a free society.
The ability to transact in things the government does not like, without their knowing about it, is a cornerstone of freedom. Many other human rights crumble if you do not preserve it.
Nope. From [1]: Federal Reserve Notes are made of 75% cotton and 25% linen fibers.
I don't think this is the right mindset—theft from your own employer is a white-collar crime. The type of people who would even be morally okay with stealing iMacs out of people's hands wouldn't be bothering to work for the store in the first place; they'd be bribing security to get in and then shuttling boxes into a van. Or holding up a delivery truck full of iMacs.
Also, getting a job specifically to steal from your employer is a pretty long-term strategy; it doesn't pay off if you only do it a couple of times. If you're doing this, you're probably doing it because you have a specific play that allows you to do it over and over without increasing the compound probability of getting caught—i.e. one that doesn't really generate any evidence personally implicating you (like the testimony of hired goons when later caught by the police), only equivocal evidence (like the fact that the person who came in to buy an iMac is a friend of the employee.) Really, generating negative utility for any individual (rather than just a corporation) in your theft, is a pretty surefire way to have someone (e.g. that same individual) take a look into what's going on.
No, most people who do it are just irrational.
If you were doing it rationally, sure, that would pretty nearly require what you say to be true, but assuming that everyone acts rationally is...inaccurate.
For example, the people around criminals tend to know they are criminals (and criminals often brag about begin criminals). People don't trust criminals and don't want to do business with them - leaving the criminal with fewer legitimate options for making money.
(PS: sorry about using “Jesus” and “guy” - it’s meant purely as an idiom - I’m not making assumptions)
Most criminals are poor because poverty drives people to crime.
Seems unlikely that hussle pulled on you would work more than once, ever.
Which maybe it is even the case; and in that case you probably should think hard about if you are not slowly drifting away from the reality as experienced by the vast majority of other people.
Yep, Apple probably does not care much about your profile as a prospect.
I requested delivery-with-signature on a $4k iMac and it got delivered to another house three blocks away. They didn't ask for the signature (though they were supposed to); they just left a $4k computer on the curb. It was marked as delivered. I'm lucky to have an honest neighbor who brought it to my doorstep (no thanks to Apple and their logistics partners).
in all seriousness though, yes? if you have to wait for the item to be shipped regardless, why would you order it to a store instead of your front door? it's the worst of both worlds.
As well as the fear of robbery for such a low value and traceable item.
Edit because I can't reply:
Just off duty police. Police have significant powers, even off duty. In addition, if you pay them well they might do favors for you when on duty. Like looking for someone in the police databases, telling you about police operations etc.
There are many security guards who are not people who failed to become police. Some are ex police, ex Army etc, but there are limited situations when an armed response is rational, and a $50k Mac is not one of them. An insurance policy is much cheaper.
Having said that, I recommend Samoans (wide) and Sudanese (tall) for unarmed intimidation potential.
Low value is relative. $50k is a lot to many people, but compared to human life, $50k isn't worth the risk.
Many families have watches or jewellery that gets passed down the family tree. A $50k watch or a piece of jewellery is something that lasts for many generations. Most people who own a watch of in that price point never paid for it, but got it as a gift. Also, timepieces of that value often rise up in value.
Anyway, it's beside the point. Whether the average person owns what doesn't affect what $50k is relative to a human life.
Well-made watches from known brands with a heritage keep their prices very well, even during economically difficult times. If you look at a mid-level luxury brand such as Rolex, you can invest $8000 for a watch that has a great track record in keeping its value: https://imgur.com/0XeTVg5 And that's not even a top-level brand. Rolex is considered mid-tier in terms of luxury watches and the Submariner is one of their lower priced models.
I find it hard to believe that you have some kind of special power to predict how such a stable market will suddenly experience a crash. Though I hope you're right, because I'd love to have access to great watches for a lower price.
Uhhhmmm... Not many? And those who wear, it's either an apple watch or some cheap utilitarian model.
> I'd love to have access to great watches for a lower price.
Expensive watches require regular service to retain their value. Let's see how it will work when Rolex asks you for $1000 a piece for your briefcase full of watches.
I can see many owners of inherited watches being unwilling to pay up for servicing their watch. Which will prompt many of them to sell it, thus creating an increase in supply. At the same time demand for Rolex-type watches will be dropping, or at best remain stable. Thus, these watches will lose value.
Me? I've yet to find those deals.
> Uhhhmmm... Not many? And those who wear, it's either an apple watch or some cheap utilitarian model.
Are those not watches? You said watches are obsolete, and now you're discounting a big part of them. Apple watches, utilitarian watches are watches. Some people like them, others don't. I would never want an Apple watch, but I love my Swatch. No data tracked anywhere, no need to recharge, and looks and feels much nicer than an Apple watch for a fraction of the cost.
At the lower end of the market, Apple alone makes something like $35 billion on watches from nothing a decade ago.
Mid-tier makers like Rolex haven't been able to meet demand for a decade now.
I think a lot of the smaller manufacturers will go away. There's something like 500 watch companies in Switzerland alone and I'm guessing most of those don't have much of a future.
Personally I navigate life without hiring any security guards. But I recognize that some people and/or circumstances might have legitimate need for one.
This is a question for Jeff Williams, COO at Apple. I am often surprised with the amount of 3rd parties that Apple interacts with and the lack of integration between each group. Apple is the company of seamless integration after all...
I'm not an Apple guy myself, but I lost a lot of respect for them as a company.
Now I’m kinda wondering if you could build a nice “rich people buying shit logistics” lifestyle biz though.
During those two hours they could work, and thus make money, it didn't make sense to drive themselves.
Their company hired a particular car hire service and the drivers would get rotated through a schedule, but they ended up having a particularly good relationship with a particular driver.
So they dropped the contract with the company, and basically just paid the one driver himself, basically a personal chauffeur, but with a schedule that is known two weeks ahead of time, with some emergencies, but not 24/7.
Eventually this allowed said driver to buy a couple of cars, and start a company himself, while always making sure to take care of my family member first and foremost himself.
They trusted the driver with their children, and for certain purchases the driver would either go pick up items (such as jewelry/high end clothes) or their driver would drive a consultant (personal shopper) to go do the shopping/pickups.
My friend moved away from the LA area, but used the same driver for ~6 years or so, the driver now runs a high-end private car hire service that offers services to cater specifically to people that need services like that. No advertising, word of mouth only, and everyone involved is highly vetted and trusted.
It's pretty amazing how much time you get back when you can pay someone else to do the things that take time but don't really provide happiness in life. Such as cleaning/driving/cooking/household chores that the rest of us have to do ourselves, and thus is all billable time.
I’ve seen other stores appropriate internet orders to make a sale. From the salespersons perspective they don’t have much to lose.
Wow what do you do that requires a $50k computer?
It sounds more like a piece of unrelated information that you are leveraging to support the story you told yourself.
I laughed. This is why customer interaction is often kept minimal, rediculous concerns like this.
It seemed like a reasonable in-store delay even though Apple was fully obligated to service my laptop under warranty (and had to ship it out for a few days to do so).
They're "more free" to do the pure bringing-stuff-out, because they know they might have to budget 30 mins or more for a complex purchase with lots of hand-holding and transferring and stuff, while a bring-out is always going to be short.
And, if you don't have your phone on you, you could buy a Mac using one of the demo Macs. I think that's almost part of the reason they're there, at this point—they certainly do prominently feature the Buy Now buttons on the kiosk modes they pop into.
I guess I should have gone around the store and figured that out?
How would I have known that clicking a button on a computer in the store will get me a person faster than an actual person telling me they will get me a person and not just that same person eventually coming out knowing I clicked the button?
I left and came back later and found a more reasonable sales person, but still ended up waiting about 10 minutes.
Then there was the time I made a service appointment, showed up slightly before my appointment, and waited 35 minutes for a “genius” to look at my phone.
I don’t know if it’s just my local store, but I avoid Apple stores as much as I can now.
It might be an issue of mindset within the company. The problems described seem regional (overcrowded stores, shady/burnt-out retail staff in some areas; positive experiences in others) that each need a separate approach but are lumped together in Apple’s one-size-fits-all approach to everything.
I predict that Apple will close their retail stores by the end of the decade, citing improved logistics). Apple products will continue to be sold at third-party retailers until the company folds or pivots in another 10 years.
The store in my area is too small, always packed and too noisy. The employees are really good and make the experience bearable, but they really converted an awesome, friendly retail experience and made it stressful and inefficient.
The people who design the non-flagship stores don’t spend much time in them.
The problem is that they have some sort of "Think different!!" thing going on and it's not working out. I am surprised Steve Jobs drove a car with round wheels. That's not very different!
(Houston, Highland Village.)
This also seems to be their process for picking up orders at the store. It's pure chaos, and I find it at least somewhat amusing that at least Apple treats their employees and customers identically.