Second on the “hype” cycle (yes, I think there’s a hype cycle of hype cycles). Funny story to show the realities of what tech can do in “retail” for a state-of-the-art tech company!

Went into an Apple store to DROP $3800 notes on an Apple Pro and Final Cut for my son, who’s a budding Director. The sales guys are great and pretty technical but that doesn’t help when:

1. they don’t have the machine in stock, or in the store.
2. they tell me to go check out the other stores (I had to tell them to do it for me)
3. they had to phone around the other stores (no tech)
4. they told me to order from the web site (which showed 3 week delivery)
5. they told I could call the store everyday to see if they had any in and reserve it (no reserve to email notification)
6. they only get deliveries mon-fri and this was sat
7. they had no clue when they would get the next mac book pro delivery. NO CLUE.
8. I told my son to call the store the very next morning (it was Sunday but I was skeptical) and miraculously they had one in stock.

This was my first Apple PC purchase ever so that was not pleasant. The fact that some system, somewhere must have known where all the MAC BOOK deliveries were and whom they were coming to doesn’t help if no-one can access it. 20 sales people in the apple store and we had to manually call in to check every day!

Now, we got what we wanted within 24 hours BUT my point is, with ALL the technology in the world supposedly linking everything (manufacturing / sales etc.,) together, the truth is, in 2007 nothing has changed.

Apple are not the exception, this is the rule. 20 years ago, when you’d buy anything in the store, they normally had it in stock *or* could tell you EXACTLY when you get it.