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Letter From the Editor
What I Learned Going to an Apple Store During the Pandemic
A lesson in temperature checks and data deletion
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
On Sunday, a man at the Apple Store pointed a temperature scanner at my forehead and pressed a button. It made me think of a tired grocer grabbing shrink-wrapped Tyson chicken from the conveyor belt and registering its bar code.
My number came up — 97.5, a bit lower than usual — and I was escorted past the Purell dispenser into the store’s basement, where an employee ran diagnostics on my iPhone. (Verdict: The screen was cracked.) He told me to come back in 90 minutes, at which point a team member would bring the repaired device outside to me and ring me up for the cost of the screen replacement. “Oh, and you backed up your data, right?” (I’m glad he asked, since the technician ended up deleting everything on my phone — more on that in a second.)
This was my first real experience with what you might call pandemic-surveillance capitalism, a new shopping experience that demands proof of health, or some semblance of it, on top of other information. To browse or get a device serviced, customers of this Apple Store, at least, now need to make an appointment ahead of time—a fair step to control traffic into the store and maintain social distancing. The…
