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Comment by bertil | Hacker News Reader

It seems like the solution would require employees to put the boxes on pads one by one… That seems to be a tremendous amount of work.

I have not been impressed by the quality of the service in-store (waiting more than an hour for basic requests, like buying an AirTag, within earshot of salespeople chatting about their weekend), but I’m not sure this is going to improve it much.

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> It seems like the solution would require employees to put the boxes on pads one by one… That seems to be a tremendous amount of work.

They also sell those boxes one by one via relative in depth customer interactions.

Setting a box in an automated update device is nothing.

You seem to assume that they would update them as they sell them—at the same time. I’m not sure how long the update would take, but I’m assuming longer than many customers would like to wait.

They could easily make the device accept 10 or even 20 devices at a time, with a simple LED on for each indication progress. Just check up once an hour and move done iPhones to the done stack and place todo iPhones in the device. Set it up on route to the toilet or next to the coffee machine and it's next to effortless.

But there would be no clear way to tell which box was done, so you rely on proper inventory—or even when updating, to tell when it’s done, presumably.

I had the same thought, although it's possible it only takes a few seconds on the pad to start the process. There's no way it has to sit there for the whole update. It's quite possible that they have to check in each box individually anyway, so this might not add that much time. And it could outweigh the time cost of helping customers with updates post-purchase (or allow them to manufacture/package devices further in advance of the release candidate being available, which could be even more valuable).

Regarding the in-store experience, I have had similar challenges. I walked in wanting to buy an iPad, and knowing exactly which model I wanted (and that it was in-stock at that store). The employee asked me "if I had an appointment". Since when does one need an appointment to purchase something off the shelf? Crazy.

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