How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster (bloomberg.com) 219
In interviews with Bloomberg, current and former Apple employees say brand building became more important than serving shoppers. From the report: In interviews, current and former Apple employees blame a combination of factors. They say the stores have become mostly an exercise in branding and no longer do a good job serving mission shoppers like Smith. Meanwhile, they say, the quality of staff has slipped during an 18-year expansion that has seen Apple open more than 500 locations and hire 70,000 people. The Genius Bar, once renowned for its tech support, has been largely replaced with staff who roam the stores and are harder to track down. That's a significant drawback because people are hanging onto their phones longer these days and need them repaired. [...] Meanwhile, retail chief Angela Ahrendts (who was hired in May 2014) began moving sales and service onto the web -- encouraging staff to tell customers to "get in line, online." Customers were to make an appointment on Apple's website and then pick up the product at a store. Apple was "trying to streamline things," says one employee, "but in the process made things more difficult for some customers."
Before her arrival, the Apple Store excelled at three key tasks: selling products, helping customers trouble-shoot their devices and teaching them how to get the most out of their gadgets. "Steve Jobs was really keen on stepping into the store and knowing what to do," recalls a former Apple retail executive, who requested anonymity to speak freely. Mission shoppers who wanted to pick up a pair of headphones or an iPhone could get in and out quickly; those who wanted to learn more about their purchase could spend an hour getting trained by a Creative. If someone brought in a busted iPhone, a Genius would sort it out. Over time, according to several current and former employees, Ahrendts upset that finely tuned balance. "You don't feel like there is much engagement at the front of the store, there isn't a push to people," says the former executive. "The store should be a place where you see upgrades happening."
Before her arrival, the Apple Store excelled at three key tasks: selling products, helping customers trouble-shoot their devices and teaching them how to get the most out of their gadgets. "Steve Jobs was really keen on stepping into the store and knowing what to do," recalls a former Apple retail executive, who requested anonymity to speak freely. Mission shoppers who wanted to pick up a pair of headphones or an iPhone could get in and out quickly; those who wanted to learn more about their purchase could spend an hour getting trained by a Creative. If someone brought in a busted iPhone, a Genius would sort it out. Over time, according to several current and former employees, Ahrendts upset that finely tuned balance. "You don't feel like there is much engagement at the front of the store, there isn't a push to people," says the former executive. "The store should be a place where you see upgrades happening."
Samsung Galaxy S5... (Score:2, Offtopic)
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}}} removable battery and headphone jack --- two requirements in any smartphone I buy.
The battery is neither here nor there for me, it's nice but not a deal breaker. Headphone jack on the other hand is vital.
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Re:Samsung Galaxy S5... (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't it obvious why I would want to remove it? One word:
Courage
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LOL! i guess you haven't bought a new one in the past 3 years!
You don't really have to. My LG V20 is nearly 3 years old and still works incredibly well. If I needed a "new" one there are options out there if you don't have to have a "flagship" phone (eg, the Samsung J7 Duo).
MicroSD support (Score:2)
I used to think highly of MicroSD support, but that's shifted once I've seen how that actually works on Android. Even for Android M and beyond, even if one formats the card as 'internal storage', the OS, as well as certain apps, still discriminate b/w residing on the main storage vs residing on the SD card. Like say your phone (or tablet) has 32GB of storage, and you have a 128GB SD card which you formatted to look like internal storage. Also, let's say that over 50% of your main storage is occupied, and
Re: Samsung Galaxy S5... (Score:5, Funny)
Manual replacement of batteries is far too dangerous for ordinary mortals. You might cut yourself!
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Manual replacement of batteries is far too dangerous for ordinary mortals. You might cut yourself!
Or the battery could explode!
Re: Samsung Galaxy S5... (Score:2)
How else will you know its genuine?
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Consequently, the batteries had to have protection circuitry built into them to monitor and control the charge level of the battery, and kill it if you'd let the charge level drop too low. It made sense to put it in the battery because (1) it would protect the battery even if you tried to charge the battery directly with 5V leads, (2) it allowed different size batteries with different charging characteristics to be used in the same phone, (3) it allowed the circuitry to monitor the age of the battery and adjust the charging profile as the battery aged and wore down, and (4) in the earlier phones it allowed both NiMH and Li-ion batteries as swap-in replacements for the same phone.
First, some (not all) batteries have a cycle counter. However, this is not safety-critical. AFAIK, these are never used during charging (except to increment them). Rather, they are used during *discharge* to estimate how likely a battery is to experience sudden voltage drops at a low state-of-charge, both to determine how high the low-voltage cutoff should be and, in some cases, to limit current consumption by variable-speed CPUs to reduce that risk.
Second, AFAIK, no Lithium ion battery can be safely cha
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And the IR blaster...don't forget the IR blaster! With ASmart Remote, it's the non-phone feature I used the most on my phone.
I have three S5s in boxes in case mine goes tits-up.
A sad commentary in light of Apple's move ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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They are moving into financing to bolster their service offerings, sort of like a Bank of Apple. This can make a lot of money for shareholders and it can increase stock prices.
If money making has replaced experience, then it only works because of Apple's size and brand recognition. Sometimes large companies just have to be astute with their brand decisions to keep the brand working. Are people moving away from iPhones, sure, does it really affect Apple? Well, we can assume they would have seen this downturn
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It actually will affect Apple if people move away from iOS, as the vast majority of their service offerings revolve around iOS. The one exception being Apple Music which has an Android app.
If you don't have an iPhone, then the watch doesn't work, CarPlay doesn't work, the App Store doesn't generate sales, nobody is buying dongles, and your fancy wireless earbuds are sub-optimal audio quality bluetooth headphones that are far more expensive with far less battery life than competitive products.
The sad part i
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I had gone there some months ago for some iPad accessory, and they told me that they've stopped carrying it for iPads, and just carry it for iPhones. That was disappointing to say the least.
Lennart Poettering and Lennart Poettering, then (Score:2)
> all of the unwanted shit like systemd and GNOME 3 and PulseAudio with sensible replacements.
PulseAudio is Lennart Poettering's project.
SystemD is Lennart Poettering's other project.
So mostly what there is to not like about Linux is Lennart Poettering.
How? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
Believing that he just happened to be there when Apple just happened to be successful is ignoring a lot of the history of the company and the situation that they were in before Jobs returned to the company. Obviously he isn't solely responsible for the turnaround, but it's pretty clear that he wrung as much out of those beneath him as he could manage and that led to much of Apple's success in the early 2000's.
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yeap, I expressed myself badly (sorry: I am not a english native speaker :P) - my comment only refers to this epoch:
Re:How? (Score:5, Informative)
Apple's success in the early 2000s is directly attributable to the moves Jobs made upon getting the big chair back - namely burying the beef with Microsoft for good in order to suck in some financial oxygen to keep the company alive, while shitcanning the total lack of focus that product development was suffering from and streamline the offerings into pro / consumer versions of laptop and desktop which people actually wanted to buy.
He didn't fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy and took a meat axe to many also-ran projects such as shitty online services nobody used (e-World), right-idea-way-before-its-time products like the Newton that nobody bought, yet-another-standard-nobody-uses-except-us offerings like OpenDoc and AppleTalk, and divested software business that didn't fit in the core mission allowing them to sink-or-swim like FileMaker.
Oh, and he sold off an absolute fuckton of ARM Holdings stock that had been gaining shitloads of paper value since the original partnership for Newton in order to turn the balance sheet and surprise everyone with profitability, but held on to the tech license which came in REALLY handy around 2008 with the intro of the A-series processors.
All of these moves were protested at the time, and they were all the right moves. Luck may explain one or two, but a series of gambles like that which brought a company back from the brink - literally a single-digit number of weeks from bankruptcy - into the most valued company on earth was not luck.
It's too bad he was such an insufferable asshole with teeth or he might be someone worth admiration.
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Jobs also realized that Classic MacOS was a hot mess that was more unstable than Windows 3.1. You can't ignore that that pile of shit was replaced with OSX, which was a continuation of NeXTSTEP that Apple acquired along with Jobs.
Re: How? (Score:3)
Apple already knew they needed to replace Classic Mac OS and had been trying unsuccessfully for years. That's when they decided to go with a pre-built solution and started looking at NextSTEP and BeOS. They picked NextSTEP and Steve brought the NextSTEP devs with him and overhauled both hardware and software in a remarkably short period of time.
But it didn't take Steve coming back for Apple to realize that Classic Mac OS was on it's last legs. The crazy amount of time and money Apple invested in replacing M
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By all accounts Jobs sabotaged the Apple II GS (Score:2)
What Jobs did was realize he could sell computers and electronics as Veblen goods. That was genius. You didn't buy iPhones and Macs because they were superior, you did it because everyone could see you had $2-$3k to blow on electronics. It's the same
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No. Jobs was a complete prick but he understood on a whole other level what constituted good user experience and was in a unique position to force that top down on the entire company. When he died, Apple lost that focus and drive and will almost certainly never get it back. Everyone at Apple reveres Steve's memory, and for that reason alone none of them will ever step up and try to replace him. And that's why the company has lost its magic.
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Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
I contacted him in a seance. He said customers are just shopping wrong.
Bean Counters strike again. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is for today's retail store, it needs to be moved from a place where you buy a product, but to a place to learn, research, being able to use and hold, and service products.
I think Jobs understood this, while post Jobs Apple, is focusing on # of sales, and cost of operation.
If I am in the need for a new device, and I decide to choose other options. I would want to get my hands on the product and take a look at it, have someone with some experience to intelligently answer my questions.
When I was going to get myself a laptop I wanted to see what this New OS X, Unix based OS can do.
When the iPhone came out, I didn't believe the Reality Distortion field, I wanted to actually hold the device and see how responsive it was.
Now the Apple Store was a good place to try Apple products, I kinda wished they were more stores like that, but where I can just go in, no pressure to buy, and just tinker with a gambit of products.
Feels like a flea market. (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Apple Store needs a host/hostess for traffic control. All the employees are always busy talking to someone and there's no line/queue so the sales floor is one big, disorganized mess.
Regression to the mean (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile, they say, the quality of staff has slipped during an 18-year expansion that has seen Apple open more than 500 locations and hire 70,000 people.
Duh. You hire more people you are virtually guaranteed to have a regression to the mean in their average capabilities. The important bit is how they build the processes surrounding those people so that they can still be effective despite being on average somewhat less capable. It's easy to hire a few hundred rock stars. It's impossible to hire 70,000 rock stars. Companies above a certain size only can function if the business processes they develop are efficient.
That said the few times I've been in Apple stores and needed help they've generally been quite competent and handled my issues with reasonable efficiency.
The Genius Bar, once renowned for its tech support, has been largely replaced with staff who roam the stores and are harder to track down.
The Genius Bar no longer exists. Now they send you to some seemingly random location in the store and the support staff comes to you. Having the support staff at a central desk probably no longer makes sense given the volume of customers they have to serve in a given day. The staff I've spoken to help 20-40 customers a day (I asked) each and I have no idea how you would make that work with the model they used 10 years ago. They've grown and they've had to adapt to handle it. The current model seems to work well enough though I don't find it to be a pleasant experience (big crowds, lots of waiting, etc).
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The stores didn't have "rock stars" they were competent people paid $22 an hour. The problem is (a) Ms. Burberry stopped training those people (having them read PDFs in a break room is a lot different from being flown to Cupertino to be trained) and (b) they started hiring for personality first rather than competency. Like she was hiring for a Hot Topic or some shit. So dumb -- and Apple paid her more than ANYONE ELSE AT THE COMPANY for this kind of shitshow??
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Service is an investment (Score:5, Interesting)
Money is more important than service.
Of course it is because if you aren't making money you can't provide service. Great service from an unprofitable company will not remain great for long.
I have worked in a company and we had a CEO that wanted to increase the service level. When we pointed out that with the bad service level we had, we still got a customer satisfaction of well above the competition, why would we throw money at it and hire more FTE's or get more expensive FTE's?
Because your competitors aren't likely to stand pat if they are even remotely competent. Amazon keeps improving their service despite the fact that their peer companies generally have worse service levels. They do this so that their competition has to hit a moving target that is already ahead of them. If you aren't getting better then you are effectively getting worse because someone else will (probably) be trying to improve. I'm not suggesting that companies dump endless amounts of money on marginal service gains but they definitely should always be trying to make it better by any reasonable means.
If they would increase the service, would they make much more?
Possibly or maybe not. But that's only one question. The other question is whether they will eventually lose customers if they fail to continue to improve service. In Apple's case the answer in the short run is probably not but in the long run it isn't so clear. Investments like that have long term payoffs. You don't do it for next quarter, you do it so you are ahead of the game in 5-10 years. If Apple's service were to remain frozen where it is now for another 10 years, do you think someone else might not surpass them eventually? Lot's of companies have died because they got ahead and then got lazy about continuing to improve.
Apple cut their own legs out (Score:5, Insightful)
"The store should be a place where you see upgrades happening."
It's hard to get people to upgrade when there's nothing good to upgrade to. When you ignore your core evangelical group and replace them with the fickle image conscious type you've picked an economical path of short term gains.
What this comes down to is that, for better or worse, Steve Job had a plan and knew how to drive people to execute on it. Without that kind of person at the helm, Apple is struggling to find an identity in a world that can easily copy every "innovation" and look in less time it took to develop such.
Can't justify the "upgrades" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to get people to upgrade when there's nothing good to upgrade to.
This has been my problem with Apple products recently. I have an iPhone, an old Mac Mini, and my wife uses a MacBook Pro. We also have an Apple TV that sees occasional use and an iPad that sees rare use. My other machines are a mix of Windows and linux boxes. I have the last generation of iPhone because the current generation wasn't much improved but still cost a lot. My Mac Mini is in need of updating but the current Mac desktop options are uncompelling to say the least - at least for me. My wife likes her MacBook but Apple hasn't introduced anything notably better since we bought it several years ago.
The iPad isn't much use because it's basically an overgrown iPhone. The iPhone works fine 99% of the time for exactly the same use cases and Apple steadfastly refuses to actually do something valuable with the larger screen. It should be an awesome device with a stylus but the software to take advantage of one sucks. It should be able to have a better home screen interface but they changed almost nothing from my phone. Apple seems caught in this delusion that everyone who grabs a stylus is some sort of graphics artist and is ignoring literally every student and professional that takes notes on the planet. And even ignoring the stylus, WTF is the interface identical to my iPhone? Let me put more icons on one home screen. Do SOMETHING that my iPhone cannot.
I'd be happy to upgrade some of this gear and some of it could really use it but Apple isn't really giving me any real reason to upgrade. Nothing they offer is sufficiently better than what I already have despite costing significant sums.
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There appear to be some pretty good offerings for note taking on the iPad...I'm looking between a couple of them myself:
Notability [gingerlabs.com]
GoodNotes [goodnotes.com]
And there are a couple others that might be contenders.
Note taking on iPads (Score:2)
There appear to be some pretty good offerings for note taking on the iPad...I'm looking between a couple of them myself:
I've looked at those and they are ok as far as they go (which isn't saying much in my opinion) but they are FAR too narrow in scope, aren't cross platform, aren't integrated with other applications, can't share their data, have bad file systems, etc. There is no file system in the iPad worth discussing which makes the whole thing kind of a non-starter. Not to mention the interface for the apps that do exist doesn't exactly blow anyone away. I've looked pretty hard at these apps and in my opinion they are
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Digital drawing isn't just for art (Score:2)
Hmm, I'd be interested in hearing exactly what you're looking for in a "note taking app"?
Think less of a note-taking app and more of a note taking ecosystem with hardware and infrastructure to support it. The general concept is anything I can do with paper and a pencil/pen but also taking advantage of filing, processing, networking and the other things computers do well. But focus on DRAWING, not trying to replicate a keyboard and mouse. Most note taking apps emulate a piece of blank paper in some fashion and that's a great start. But the interfaces tend to be clumsy and the file systems an
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Apple annual revenue for 2018 was $265.595B, a 15.86% increase from 2017. [macrotrends.net]
When your "short term gains" are measured in the hundreds of billions, you've got a little bit of reserve in case you have a few sparse years trying to figure out a new market. As long as Apple isn't burning through a trillion dollars of assets in the short term, they're going to make it long term. They have so much money that it would be nearly impossible for them not to, no matter what crap they put out for a few years to a decade in
We're smarter than you (Score:5, Interesting)
The usual attitude at Apple stores.
I also get the feeling nowadays that the staff have given up trying to sell things, they see themselves as showroom attendants where people can look at things then order them on line.
...laura
Anecdote illustrating current state of customer se (Score:2)
Last year I needed to have the battery in my iPhone 7 replaced. I made an appt online for the first slot I could get, which was more than a week in the future and at about 3pm. The store is located in a mall not /that/ far from where I work so I figured I could sneak out and drop it off at 3 and pick it up on the way home. It just so happened though that on the day of the appt I was near the mall at lunchtime and popped in to drop it off. I didn't expect to get it back any earlier but it would have saved me
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Re:Anecdote illustrating current state of customer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Anecdote illustrating current state of custome (Score:2)
No, they definitely failed. If I show up at my mechanics shop 3 hours early and say "here are the keys, I'll be back in 5 hours", he won't miss a beat. But he's an actual professional who works for a living rather than a soy-boy standing around in a glass walled showroom while trying to ignore customers. So I guess I understand the difference.
Re: Anecdote illustrating current state of custome (Score:4, Informative)
Lemme clear you up on this.
I did a battery replacement last year and this is what they have to do: 0) get you to login so they can attach their diagnostic tool. 1) check OS. 2) check battery life. 3) make sure the phone is serviceable.
If you try to drop off your phone - THEY CAN"T DO ANY OF THAT! You need to be present so a) you can authenticate and prove it's your phone and b) you know they're doing their job.
Then you can drop off your phone for them to replace the battery.
Sorry Apple Genius Bar aint an auto mechanic. Too much of your personal data on there.
Re: Anecdote illustrating current state of custom (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely none of that should be required for a simple battery replacement. Your "personal data" is irrelevant to the process. If I tell a mechanic to do an oil change he isn't going to demand I be there because the entertainment system has my Bluetooth pairing data on it.
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Absolutely none of that should be required for a simple battery replacement. Your "personal data" is irrelevant to the process. If I tell a mechanic to do an oil change he isn't going to demand I be there because the entertainment system has my Bluetooth pairing data on it.
It's relevant because they're trying to ensure you're not scamming them with a battery that a) can't be replaced or b) is already healthy.
Also trying to avoid taking a phone that is a fake bag of parts. This shit actually happens, and Apple apparently loses millions a year on scammers who do that then complain to Apple.
Comparing a closed-loop system like Apple to a commodity parts situation like automobiles is not meaningful at all.
Re: Anecdote illustrating current state of custom (Score:2)
Scamming them ... by paying them to replace a good battery?
That has to be one of the dumbest things I've heard in a while.
As to the rest, as long as the phone powers on it's all a nonsensical argument. And they can certainly power it on without you being there.
Apple stores were like buying a Lexus (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading how Lexus did the same thing. They make you feel special coming in. You feel like a big shot the way they're waiting on you. It definitely primes you to spend big money. If they've let some of that slip then yeah, they're sales are gonna suffer.
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So far so good (Score:2)
Yet another example (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is yet another example of what happens when a company run by an Engineer becomes run by a pointy haired manager.
Tim Cook is focused on maximizing profit to the exclusion of everything else, including the things Apple did very well.
That's why Apple is now putting out credit cards and services instead of making quality hardware and software.
Re: Yet another example (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? What 'engineer'? Woz hasn't been in the picture for several decades.
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Steve Jobs was not an engineer. He was creative and highly skilled at marketing.
Blackberry (Research in Motion) is a company that was run by engineers.
iPhone vs Blackberry. Who won?
That Apple was not run by engineers is exactly why it prospered while RIM failed.
My Story (Score:5, Interesting)
Last Sunday I drove my wife to the Stanford Mall so she could go to Macys. That mall has both an Apple store and a Microsoft Store. Also a Tesla store. (I put that last in just to trigger the Musk-Derangement-Syndrome guys.)
So I wander into the Apple store. It is mobbed but then again the whole mall is crowded the day after Cinco-de-Mayo. I'm shopping for a new MacBook Pro to upgrade from my mid-2015 model. I am doing work that requires a lot more storage than I used to, and graphics that ran cooler would be nice. Two steps into the largish store I get helped by a guy who shows me what I want to see and answers the few questions that I have. Correctly sensing that I don't need hand-holding he leaves me a lone but later a second critter notices me and offers to help. She also doesn't act pushy.
Before leaving I just tour the displays to see anything new. Not interested in ipads and watches I'm out. Overall not a bad shopping experience. They did not need my business there was a lot going on. I have to contemplate whether spending $3000+ at the moment is worth it though.
Next is the Microsoft store. Mostly empty. There are FOUR employees lined up at the door to greet me. Walmart eat your heart out. Again not too pushy which is appreciated. I notice they have a lot more interesting stuff than the Apple store does. 3D printer demos. VR headset demos. X-Box everything. They have a real interesting X-Box-in-a-box packaging that is meant for travel I hadn't seen before. Most of the customers are kids playing video games with attentive employees offering suggestions. (I suppose they were cut loose from their parents who were shopping. Kinda like me at the moment.) I'm not a gamer so I don't have a lot of interest in that.
I'd tell you about the Tesla store but I don't want to be too obvious.
At the end of the day I ended up at the men's part of Macy's and bought a couple of nice Polo shirts -- 30% off. By that time the wife called and we were ready to leave.
Moral of the story? You decide. But the idea that The Apple Store has come apart at the seams just doesn't square with experience. Here, at least.
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You didn't ask them to do anything, in fact you asked them not to do anything, so you hardly strained the seams of their slacks there. The stuff in the Apple store seemed too expensive to you, while the stuff in the Microsoft store was interesting. Your anecdote doesn't tell us anything useful about Apple's ability to serve customers, but it does tell us that the Microsoft store is more interesting the Apple store...
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Most boring story ever, I fast forwarded through it and was still bored.
iSlump (Score:1)
Economics may have played a part. The iPhone and iPad came out during the depths of the Great Recession. Back then companies had more options when hiring. As the economy slowly climbed back to normal, Apple was faced with lower quality hires, cutting staff, or paying sales reps more. Apparently they chose mostly the first two in order to keep the budgets roughly the same.
No info or prices in the store (Score:1)
Fill a store (Score:1)
Want. Good new design that works. Tested new designs.
Can afford in that area of a city.
That are "new".
Do a new task better/quickly.
Never place any store in an area that's low/middle income.
People in the store have to have the money to buy a product. Not to pay the cost of transport to look at a product.
Education matters. Map a city and find educated people with real money to spend. They get a nice store to walk to.
Got a $1000 product? Sell to people who can pay another $
Doesn't surprise me (Score:1, Troll)
"Lost its luster?" (Score:3)
When I need an iDevice repaired, the Apple Store is literally the last place I'll go. I recently needed a new charging jack for an iPhone. At the Apple Store I was told that the price would be $350, plus I was going to lose any un-backed-up data, since their plan was simply to replace the entire phone with a refurbished unit. Oh, and I also got a lecture about how it was "my fault" because they could "tell" I'd gotten water in the jack. (I hadn't. It was probably a droplet of condensation).
Independent repair shop: $59, done in an hour, no loss of data, and in exchange for a modest cash tip, they hand delivered it to my workplace.
I understand the utility/appeal of the Apple Store as a *retail* outlet, or a place to see what the new Ipad looks like, but it's never had any other useful function.
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It saddens me that Apple is spending so much of its energy and resource trying to destroy the independent repair shop business. They make chipsets that have hardly any other justification but to be impossible to buy and essential for the repair of Macbooks, for instance.
Sales, not support (Score:2)
The Genius Bar, once renowned for its tech support, has been largely replaced with staff who roam the stores
That was my experience. Go into a store - every employee wants to sell you something. Ask for support - they tell you to go online and talk to someone offshore.
Bloomberg (Score:2)
What I heard (Score:2)
I haven't bought an Apple product in years so I have limited experience with the direction the Apple Store has gone, but a close friend recently quit his Genius job after a decade, and he complained more than once that Apple hadn't just de-prioritized Macs compared to iDevices, but had also de-prioritized teaching Geniuses basic computer skills. He told me about a specific case where a customer brought a Mac in for something like the third or fourth time, and described persistent random reboots. My friend
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Just wondering why you capitalized "genius"?
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Your argument does not make any sense at all. Are you sure it's not due to early-onset dementia?
One word (Score:2)
Arrogance.
when the gold loses its luster (Score:2)
From the Conan the Barbarian movie (and probably one of the books):
"King Osric: There comes a time, thief, when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father's love for his child."
Genius bar, renown support? (Score:2)
...not if Louis Rossman has anything to say about it (Check his videos on Apple support on youtube), you'll laugh, but you'll learn something.
soulless enterprise minus soulful iconoclast (Score:2)
There can only be one soulful pinch-chin. And when that lynchpin passes on, the distributed value system of the rest of the organization inexorably gains sway—like the bulk of a train formerly heading up a steady mountain incline, with its motive engine liberated by excessive faith in fruit juice from its relentless, overbearing slog.
Don't care (Score:2)
I'm on my 4th iPhone and I have never set a foot in an apple store.
Faster and less crowded (Score:2)
From the article:
Ahrendts was determined to get rid of lineups, but now the stores are often crowded with people waiting for their iPhones to be fixed or batteries swapped out. ...
In the past, Geniuses could work on a Mac or iPhone right at the counter, chatting and explaining what they were doing. “The people doing the support now don’t have a lot of room to work,” this person says. “They often have to take your machine to a back room.”
Apple should open Customer Service Centers (CSCs), which take care of repairs, returns, consultations, etc. People would take their phones to a CSC (instead of an Apple retail store) for repairs. That would cut down on crowding for the customers at the CSCs, and for the customers at the retail stores.
The CSCs should be in locations that have plenty of nearby parking, and there should be plenty of Geniuses there to help you. If your phone needs repairs, you want to park close by, walk into a
Anecdotal but... (Score:2)
I have an iPhone, mostly by happenstance. ... but also wouldn't let me upgrade to an iPhone with more storage for a few extra dollars.
I kind of like it; it's not bad overall.
Was having issues with the front-facing camera. Took it to them.
It came back unable to use the mouthpiece and they said they couldn't fix it.
Grumble grumble. Fine...
A few months go by... Dropped it, screen cracked. Take it to an Apple Store.
They gave me back a phone that would not boot.
It's nice that they promptly replaced the phone
Plus
Re:Apple bash post (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this is not mindless Apple bashing - this is actual analysis of a growing problem at Apple Retail - the stores have become glorified electronics sections at Walmart or Target - it used to be a place to get help with your expensive new device or learn to get the most out of it from knowledgable product experts. It seems that has been de-emphasized in favor of... I really don't know actually.
Re:Apple bash post (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems that has been de-emphasized in favor of... I really don't know actually.
Cost-cutting. That's what it always is.
Re:Apple bash post (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree completely: Apple stores used to be places where you could expect to be treated as if you had real value. My time in them goes all the way back to the PPC days (yeah, I had one of those dome iMacs and thought it was the most brilliant design ever). Whenever I had a question or problem, I could go to the store confident about how I'd be treated there. They would sooner freely replace a device than see you walk out unhappy with the visit (it happened for me once, with an early MacBook Pro -- they spent an hour working on it and finally made some phone calls, got approval, and sent me home with a newer machine and a promise to get my data preserved from the old one onto an external drive, a promise they fulfilled).
Now? They're just another over-large, profit-obsessed corporation that does assembly-line customer service.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps people are just going to the Apple store and hiring away any actual talent to work in their office. Apple's surely not going to pay genius wages, which presumably is why they've closed the genius bar. There's nowhere inside Apple in between Apple stores and Apple Inc. for Apple store employees to go if they're good employees, but don't know enough to work for corporate.
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When did they close the Genius Bar? Seems to still be a think in UK stores...
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In favor of form over function. Apple stores may not function that well, but they look really good, don't they?
As a parallel, consider the current line of MacBook Pros. They look gorgeous on the outside, they're thin, they're symmetrical (two USB-C ports on each side), but functionally speaking, they're a complete mess. The same philosophy extends from Apple's products to their retail outlets.
Re:Apple bash post (Score:5, Interesting)
As the owner (still) of a second generation Mac (which STILL works, if you have 30 minutes), I have to say that Apple is running on momentum only.
What new product have they introduced since Job's death?
Nothing but iterations of existing products.
Customer service has eroded to the point where they deliberately lie to you about your phone being repairable. The send out updates that brick your phone irretrievable and the only thing they offer is a suggestion to upgrade to a new phone.
Apple is merely another HP, or Dell, etc. now.
Re:Apple bash post (Score:5, Interesting)
False. With Dell, HP, etc you can replace internal parts of your machine, use whatever mouse you want and perhaps most importantly, not worry about your keyboard becoming unusable because of a single crumb.
This doesn't even get into the huge price and performance difference. The Windows machines cost far less and have better specs than the overpriced, underpowered Macs.
Re: Apple bash post (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)ve plugged in many mice into many Macs and they just work. All the buttons, everything. And a 4Mhz i7 is the same as any other. I never understood the need for this anti-Mac folklore.
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There are a lot of affluent and influential fucks out there who have remained willfully ignorant of technology, almost like it was a strategy to get them into "strategic" jobs like management where they didn't need to know anything about technology, and many of them (most?) of them use iPhones and Macs.
For them, anyone who is even modestly competent with technology is a genius.
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Huh, so it looks like you don't understand the difference between criticism of a person and criticism of a while group of people based on some broad, irrelevant attribute.
Weird.
Though actually, that does explain a lot...
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Speak of the devil ...
You don't apparently get colloquial english usage either. I guess you're not a native speaker then?
FYI, you use the phrase when the person you're talking about turns up, not some other person who you've grouped together as having broadly similar political views.
Re: (Score:2)
So, again, this is just bull.
If you want, ask me anything and Iâ(TM)ll answer.
Why does Apple use weird fucking apostrophes and quotation marks?