An iPhone Launch Amid a Pandemic
iPhone launches have always been a masterclass in logistics, but this year's launch in the midst of a pandemic was coordination on steroids.
On October 23, 2020, the iPhone 12 & iPhone 12 Pro launched in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, the UK, the US, and more than 30 other countries and regions. But this was a launch unlike any other that preceded it because it happened to occur amid a global pandemic. iPhone launches, typically jubilant events characterized by big crowds, long lines, high-fives & cheering, were drastically altered this year to protect the health of staff and customers alike in a launch event unlike any I’ve witnessed before.
Preorders for the iPhone 12 & 12 Pro began at 05:00 PDT on Friday, October 16. At least in Canada, customers were given three options when checking during the first wave of preorders:
Pay in full and have the iPhone delivered to your door.
Pay in full & pick-up the iPhone in-store on October 23.
Reserve an iPhone for pick-up on October 23.
I chose to reserve a phone in-store for pick-up and payment on October 23. This was the best option for people who may have wanted to do an in-store device trade-in and apply the credit towards their new phone or buy the iPhone on a carrier subsided plan.
The Launch Experience
The pick-up window for my iPhone was between 17:15-17:30. A weather alert warning to expect as much as 20 cm of snow throughout the day led me to decide to travel to the Apple Store earlier than necessary, to leave as much time as possible if the road conditions were poor. And if I arrived early, perhaps there would be the possibility of picking up the phone and return home before conditions worsened.
The drive? Well it sucked!
The first stark difference upon arriving at the store was how empty it looked. Unlike previous launches, the hum of the store and the queues formed outside were a fraction of those seen in the past. A crowd you might expect at an Apple Store on a mundane Tuesday before closing was the crowd formed during one of the most anticipated products Apple will release all year.
When I asked the rep outside the store whether there was a possibility of picking up the phone earlier, the answer was unequivocal: "No." In the before times, I've had success queuing and picking up a product early if the lines were shorter, but no exceptions were being made this time. I was even encouraged to avoid hanging around the store to find somewhere to sit, and only return at the exact time listed in my pick-up window. I totally get that and appreciate how much Apple clamped down on unnecessary soliciting and crowd sizes this year.
The queuing outside the Apple store was coordinated to minimize and limit people who needed service inside the store.
Returning at 17:15, I was first escorted to the security checkpoint and asked a series of screening questions (any recent international travel? Any flu-like symptoms?). If you can't recite the COVID-screen questions for your region off by heart by now, then where have you been the past 10-months? First screening questions, next to a temperature check, and then escorted into my first lineup.
This first lineup seemed to be an unsorted (I'll explain in a minute) queue of about a dozen people, spaced six feet apart, with dots on the ground to mark precisely where everyone was to stand. First thought: A dozen people for an iPhone launch timeslot seemed incredibly small. I have no way of knowing this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Apple lowered the cap on the number of customers their stores were processing through per hour.
After snaking through the line, I met a representative who asked what brought me to the Apple Store that evening. After scanning my reservations QR code, he led me to one of the two sorted lines outside the store. The first line was for those who had an iPhone reservation, and the second seemed to be for those who had a pick-up window for something else from the store. Again, each line was spaced feet apart from the other, with dots demarcating spacing between customers.
Once I got to the top of the line, another rep asked more specific questions about what I needed: Purchasing anything besides the iPhone? Was this a carrier purchase or an unlocked phone? And whether I needed any assistance setting up the device and if I would prefer queuing into a third line that offered outside-the-store iPhone pick-ups and payment. I hadn't noticed before, but whatever fancy POS system Apple now uses allowed the rep to transfer my requests wirelessly to the employee who came to escort me into the store.
As I walked into the store, I was given the lowdown about what to expect during our transaction. First, we would be standing on opposite ends of the table and sanitizing our hands during the interaction. At most, there were ten customers allowed into the store at any one time, each paired with an Apple employee who stood across the table from them.
The remainder of the transaction finished how it had in the before times, except for the employee sanitizing their POS device after putting in my credit card pin and asking me to muffle-shout my email to them through my mask rather than have me type it in myself. iPhone in hand and the receipt in my inbox, the entire process took approximately 30-minutes from start to finish.
10°F? Snowfall warning? Sounds like perfect iPhone 12 Pro weather!
Apple launches have always been a masterclass in logistics, and this year's launch was coordination on steroids. Every piece moved in lockstep to ensure a monitored flow of customers, minimizing crowd size and maximizing physical distancing. The result was a very safe-feeling experience for me as a customer, and I can only hope that these measures also helped keep employees feeling comfortable as well!
