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.

Well, to be fair, they don’t know who’s knowledgable and who’s not?

I just order my stuff online, walk in, and pick it up. Not sure that it’s super frequent I have a “I need this hardware in 30 minutes or less” situation

It’s a brave commenter who tries telling Apple they’re doing retail wrong.

I’d guess Apple wants to avoid their shops feeling like a supermarket, to avoid commoditisation. They want it to be like buying a work of art, where each one is unique and special. You need a knowledgable curator to guide you.

I know that for us on HN it’s all bullshit, but it’s a very, very successful strategy.

Its nothing new either, luxury brands (eyewear, purses, cars, whatever) have discovered this decades if not century ago, why do you think people actually buy say Versace suits?

And I disagree HN crowd 'looked through' this, the amount of tribalism and emotional irrationality that almost any Apple-related topic here brings is probably unparalleled.

I think the overall delayed and selective launch is attributed to the reasons you mentioned. They know they'll have to get this right 17 years after the initial iphone was released. I'd probably do the same thing if I were the head of commercialization/distribution. If they screwed this up (selling a few hundred Ks of units on a global release in the first few months), the stock will get hammered