Apple’s biggest launch of the year may have been last week or something
“Last week, Apple unveiled its Today at Apple concept. This involves concerts and free classes at Apple stores. Its spirit is to entice you in, not to buy products but to be part of the brand, and to allow the brand to be part of you,” Chris Matyszczyk writes for CNET. “It’s hard to overstate how important this actually may be, because it’s an example of Apple anticipating the world as it’s becoming, not as it is or was.”
“Look at the Today at Apple ad launched last week and you won’t see one instance of selling and buying,” Matyszczyk writes. “As online purchase becomes normal for just about every product on earth, the concept of a physical store ceases to revolve around basic transactions… So what will the stores now be for? For everything that happens when you’re not buying the product. They’ll exist to bind you to the brand on a more consistent basis, not just when a new iPhone launches or your old iPhone needs fixing. They’ll exist to make you believe Apple isn’t a brand that sells products, but a club to which you’ve purchased membership.”
Matyszczyk writes, “Look back in a few years’ time and I fancy you’ll find that this launch seems like the stamp of a new direction, one in which people’s relationship with Apple materially changed, far more than it did with the launch of the iPhone 8.”
MacDailyNews Take: If a reworked retail initiative – has everyone forgotten that Apple Stores have offered free workshops since inception? – is Apple’s “biggest launch of the year,” sell your shares ASAP.
The Apple stores offer an amazing new way to buy a computer. Rather than just hear about megahertz and megabytes, customers can now learn and experience the things they can actually do with a computer, like make movies, burn custom music CDs, and publish their digital photos on a personal website. — Apple CEO Steve Jobs announcing the opening of Apple’s first retail stores, May 15, 2001
Apple Retail Store tree planter seatsSo, what’s next? Are the Apple Stores’ too-high, leg-dangling, thrombosis-inducing tree planters* going to save the rainforest?
Chris, let’s try to get a grip on reality, shall we? This world is drowning in more than enough fevered, delusional hyperbole already.
* If the tree’s rootball requirements are too high to accommodate ergonomic seating for anyone other than Shaquille O’Neal, then the design concept fails. Ditch the idea. Don’t go off on a merry hunt for soft corinthian leather on which to blow some more budget while claiming a U.S. patent on it.
