Last Hours Before Christmas in an Apple Store

I spent my last available Christmas eve hours in Apple stores to survey the buying patterns–and it was pretty obvious. Visitor traffic looked like an ordinary Saturday, but the computer display counters were completely abandoned in favor of the POS counters and the iPod Express tables. People weren’t browsing today, but instead were coming in, pulling out their credit cards and buying. Every POS position was staffed (iMacs and Powerbooks) and two persons were working the iPod Express table to process purchases quickly. The lines grew and shrank during the time I was there, with perhaps 12-14 in line at its longest. It seemed that the black iPod models were the most popular, since they were the ones most commonly out of stock, as indicated on the 30-inch Cinema Display.