Lion Download = No Apple Store Visit :(
While excited to install Lion the day it drops (possibly this week; fingers crossed), I became a little sad recently upon the realization that as a software download through the Mac App Store — a visit to an Apple Store proper will no longer be necessary.
Which is a bummer. The past few OS X releases have involved a ritual line-waiting event at the local Apple Store (Burlingame), with a fun souvenir as a reward: A black t-shirt sporting an OS X Leopard logo, and metal dog tags to commemorate Panther. Wow, that was a while ago (2003).
So while it’s practical, convenient, and all cloudy-cool to have downloadable Lion, it also marks the end of rare opportunity to mingle with fellow Apple nerds who want product “X” (no pun intended) on day one. All we have left in terms of line-waiting are the annual iPhone and iPad launches.
Perhaps the stores will have some special Lion launch party activities, or some new hardware to show off — some excuse to visit an Apple Store this week. But what I really want is a Lion t-shirt… please?
I remember those parties well. The iPod DJs were my favorite part. (Forget when they started adding those.) And the fact that in the old days, you could always count on some of the executives to show up, at least at the Palo Alto Store. I met a lot of them that way.
It is a bit of a shame that we won’t be doing that this time around.
I wonder how much of a hit the retail operation will be taking from moving Lion to a download only status. I’m sure some folks will come in to “borrow” Apple’s WiFi to download it, but the store will likely not even get credit for those sales. So it’s definitely some kind of a lost opportunity for a peak sales night. I guess the revenue per square foot is so strong on an average day nowadays that it doesn’t matter much anymore. And like you said, there’s always hardware releases, which bring plenty of festivities to the brick and mortar stores on other days.
There is that vague sense of a lost community activity, though. Like you said, having the T-Shirt meant something. (I still have several of mine. ) Made you part of a group. Encouraged you to leave the house for one or two nights a year and actually engage with other likeminded people.
But I think we forget that Apple isn’t a scrappy little company with a small but devoted following anymore. It’s a huge mega-corporation with more users than any of us ever imagined. I’m thinking the ‘Apple nerd’ events are going to be left to the nerds themselves from here on out for the most part.