Apple shut down plenty of retail stores as the COVID-19 pandemic begins to peak—on December 20, it briefly shut down every single location in California, Mexico, Brazil, and more than a dozen in London. Now that England and Scotland are entering a pair of new nationwide lockdowns, Apple is shutting all of its remaining stores in the UK.
As Michael Steeber’s 9to5Mac notes, that means that 18 new stores are already closing across the UK, including some in Scotland and one in Belfast, Ireland—though it seems like the Belfast store might have already been closed.
Although it seems worth mentioning the closures, they do not make all that much of a difference to most shoppers who have not been able to visit many of these shops physically since November. That’s why Apple began providing express delivery only to all of these stores. You may have picked up orders online, but you couldn’t have browsed.
