From Mark Gurman’s “Apple May Start Reopening Stores in First Half of April” posted Tuesday afternoon:
The details were disclosed in a memo from Senior Vice President of People and Retail Deirdre O’Brien that was obtained by Bloomberg News.
“For all of our retail stores outside of Greater China, we will reopen our stores on a staggered basis. At this time, we anticipate some stores may be able to open in the first half of April depending on the conditions in their community,” O’Brien wrote. “We will provide updates for each store as soon as specific dates are established.”
“In all our offices outside of Greater China, we are extending flexible work arrangements for all team members — outside of those whose work requires them to be onsite — through at least April 5, which will then be reevaluated weekly depending on your location,” O’Brien told staff in the memo sent this week.
O’Brien said Apple is “putting the health of our teams, customers, and communities first.”
My take: The president, who said today that he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” will love this. “I think it’s possible, why not?” he said.
Headline from the Onion (with apologies to anyone it offends):
Trump Urges Loosening CDC Restrictions To Let Coronavirus Get to Work
While we have airborne infectious isolation rooms at one of our 4 hospitals (Sacred Heart, Deaconess, Holy Family and Shriner) as of February 23 it houses only 5 patients, all of whom were brought here by US Dept HHS. Kootenai Medical in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho gives us 5 major hospitals serving about 700,000 all within 35 miles.
So far we have escaped the negativity of COVID-19. Please don’t plan to move up here, we like our “small” city environment with big city amenities just the way it is.
Northeast Washington simply is beautiful. I have hung-out in Spokane and used it as a starting base in preparation for backpacking the Sherman Peak and Abercrombie Mountain region. The Colville District Ranger Station has some of the most informed and knowledgeable Forest Rangers who knew the region like the back-of-their-hands, giving me extremely good advice on conditions of trails, areas for over night camping and sights to see in the wilderness. Great country with great peoples.
To All: Apple soon will be coming back on-line fully. The Apple Supply Chain is ramping up fast. Folk are going to be pleasantly surprised and analysts baffled by how well Apple transitioned during the Covid-19 crisis with sustained revenues in services and hardware.
I suspect we will not see the levels of suppressed revenues and earnings all initially anticipated. I am not attempting to mitigate the tragedy of Covid-19. I believed, firmly though, that quarantined folk turned toward Apple for increased services and for upgraded hardware during this period of the virus.
Apple has had some excellent promotions to facilitate consumer traffic from quarantined workers and family members to Apple hardware and services components for individuals working from home and for other family members quarantined to participate in educational classes, to enjoy entertainment and to experience leisure activities during a difficult period.
Next time you get up this (goes for anybody) look me up. I’ll show you where the locals go to eat.
We only just got our shelter in place order here in California. It will likely be a month till that gets lifted (two or three incubation periods). I wouldn’t be surprised if this got pushed back till May.
“We only just got our shelter in place order here in California.”
Just bear in mind that borders are extremely porous between US states. And it’s just beginning to make the rounds, world-wide.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. We’re playing for time with personal distancing because it’s really all we can do, and the alternative is horrifying. Third World countries will make Italy look like a picnic.
BTW, Best Buy does do curbside right now. Pick up/drop off, with no customers allowed in the store. In our area, they do have an Apple section in the store, so it might be an option for getting repairs.