Soon you might be able to purchase an iMac at your local Apple Store and have it shipped to your home rather than having to take the computer home with you.
In his PowerOn newsletter(Opens in a new window) Sunday, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman said Apple retail stores will be able to ship products to customers directly through their EasyPay point-of-sale machines.
Beyond being more convenient for those who live in major cities and might be taking public transportation home, Gurman notes that the move could be a positive one for stores as well. Notably, a store can sell a customer a product even if the product in question isn’t currently in stock at the store. It could also allow some Apple Stores to keep less inventory on hand.
With the launch of the Vision Pro, shipping could also be used to get customers a missing lens insert or light seal without the store having to miss out on the entire sale of the device.
“We want all our customers to leave the store with exactly what they came for. And this will be easier with EasyPay Online Ordering, launching in early August,” reads a memo sent to retail store employees and obtained by Gurman. “With a single bag transaction, you’ll have the option of different fulfillment methods, like shipping or personalizing a product.”
Currently, if a customer wants to personalize their device, they have to do that via the online store.
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Also in today’s newsletter, German addressed Apple’s AI aspirations. Specifically, he notes that Apple is currently “all-in on large language models (LLMs) and is working on creating a generative AI product for as early as next year.” Apple has also reportedly already built a ChatGPT-like service for employees that “helps them prototype future features, summarize text and answer questions based on data it has been trained with.”
The company reportedly has not yet determined what its consumer-facing AI product will be.
