He's Canadian. To make the purchase, he'd have to purchase from Apple.ca, where prices are much more expensive, not to mention the tax rate for Quebec (which I think is up to 18% now). Anyways, while visiting, we were going to pass by the store one day, and decided to make the stop.

Fair enough. However, it sounds like you overestimate the experience at other retailers. Waiting in checkout lines is also a bottleneck where one grabs the product off-the-shelf. Lines are typical in popular stores.

For example, a few days before Xmas I spilled beer on my keyboard and had to get a new one ASAP. I drove down to BestBuy, walked back to where all the keyboards were on display, and quickly scanned the shelves. I prefer wired to wireless for the desktop, and quickly found there were only 2 (out of ~15) wired models. They were gaming-oriented with all sorts of cruft, costing ~$80. I glanced around, noticed the Apple product area, walked over and found a simple Apple wired keyboard for $50 (I don't even own a Mac). I spent the next 20min in the checkout line, where the cashier tried to get me to signup for some program(s) of theirs. Not a pleasant experience either.