Tim Cook Visits the Fifth Avenue Apple Store

Nice piece by John Paczkowski for Buzzfeed:

Tim Cook is twisted sideways in the deep passenger-side backseat of a black Cadillac Escalade, rolling through Manhattan from the Flatiron district up to the company’s flagship Fifth Avenue Apple Store — where a great glass cube sits atop Apple’s subterranean retail center. Nobody at the store knows he’s coming. Not the manager. Not security. There’s no timetable for him to appear. And so for the 20 minutes or so it takes the car to wind through the late afternoon Manhattan traffic, I have him largely to myself.

Cook likes the secrecy. He does these store drop-ins periodically and has found that surprise visits are far better for everyone involved, himself included. The CEO of Apple visiting one of Apple’s many retail stores is de facto a big deal, particularly for store employees who’d likely agonize over preparations if they knew he was coming. So Cook keeps it quiet. “I almost always go in unannounced,” he says. “It’s rare that I tell anyone that I’m going. But I do try to go to stores every time I’m traveling to a new city. It’s important.”

Interesting, but not surprising, that Cook just pops in unannounced.

Cook will appear on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert tonight.

★ Tuesday, 15 September 2015