Solving Apple Pre-Order Problems


Jeremy Horwitz puts down some thoughts we've often discussed on the podcasts over time. Basically with all of Apple's resources over the years Apple should be able to figure things out to sufficiently improve the pre-order experience for its customers.

I agree with #1 and #3, which is dropping the 12:01 PT pre-order launch. There's no reason to make customers jump through hoops for products like this, and if they don't get launch day delivery, dealing with problems in the middle of the night just makes the situation worse.

#3 is connected I think in how Apple dishing out available inventory. There must be a better way of doing things that reward customers willing to pony up first and do so more fairly. If you put in a pre-order before launch day, someone walking into a store shouldn't be able to get their box before you.

I don't really agree with #2 of limiting SKUs. I think Apple's supply chain can handle changeover better than people think. The real issue isn't the number of options but really just predicting what's needed for launch. Apple Watch was double hard with a big number of SKUs and no history to predict what people would want far enough in advance to matter. Still, the number of SKUs I think is really just a problem for the first few weeks of launch and after that I think Apple can make as many boxes of 50 SKUs as 5 regardless of product mix.

The last item is a long-time complaint, which is the encouraging of customers to line up overnight like cattle for free publicity. We'll see if Apple does this again for the next iPhone or whether the iPhone 6/6+ was the last.