Apple Store Reserve and Pickup for Holiday Shopping

Apple has announced a way a new Reserve and Pick Up option for their retail stores to help with holiday shopping. You can now order hardware products online and then pay for and pick it up from December 15 to Dec. 24. The offer only seems to include hardware- iPods, iPhones, Mac Pros (wouldn’t mind getting that for Christmas!) MacBooks, Mac Minis, and iMacs- no software or accessories as of yet. Makes sense that only large ticket items would need to be reserved, though, since those are what are most likely to be in short supply. To reserve your goodies, just sign in to the Apple online store with an Apple ID, choose a store location and that’s it; pay when you pick it up. Gift wrapping is also available for iPods and laptops; the option costs an added $5.

This option could save you from making a trip to store for nothing if they are out of stock (could always just call them, instead, though) but mostly saves the aggravation of waiting in line, fighting traffic, finding parking, etc. Wait a minute- why not just use the free shipping Apple offers? Well, Apple are just covering all the bases here, their customer service has a pretty good reputation, at least for the initial buying experience (don’t ask me about Apple tech support) so they are keeping up with the other online stores that offer similar services. Not only that, but can you say Impulse Buy? if you can get more people in a buying mood to your physical store, once they start looking around at all the shiny new toys they’ll probably buy other stuff they didn’t actually know they wanted until then.