[bsandbox]

Another hidden benefit that they may or may not make use of - Apple can directly observe their users interfacing with their products. With websites and to a certain extent with software, usability data collection is a given. But for consumer products like iPods, iPhones and Macs, it's a little harder to come by. By having thousands of end users in dozens of stores around the world playing with their gear, it seems like a great opportunity for Apple to get direct feedback on user pain points.

[ugh]

It wouldn’t be an easy task to adequately collect that information. Their retail employees are not sociologists or usability experts and letting them collect usability data which might be quite subtle and usually cannot be had with a simple standardized form seems like a daunting task.

There is also the danger that Apple ends up with massive amounts of unstructured data, so much that no one can possibly make heads or tails of it.

[sil3ntmac]

Yes that seems a very possible result. Besides, I'm sure Apple already does UX/UI testing of their products as much as possible.