Angela Ahrendts Departing Apple in April, Deirdre O'Brien to Oversee Retail and People

It appears that Deirdre O'Brien has no retail experience which makes this promotion a little bit strange.

 

Curious if you have references for your first statement? Not because I doubt you but I would like to see what someone thinks the issue was as well as why the importance to raise back traffic. With Apple products increasingly available at resellers like Best Buy and many online venues, with improvements in online ordering, and with Apple being nearly a decade past being the curious underdog for which one had to visit a store in order to experience things, I don’t see why it should be a surprise that foot traffic decreased.

I’d think rock solid products that people want to drive over and buy now rather than wait for mail order should be the crucial ingredient to retail store success, less so the employees.

 

yes she does. She’s only been doing the HR stuff for the last couple years.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/app...-as-its-stores-become-saturated-2013-11/?IR=T

I am going by this article I came across a while back. I suspect that was why Angela was brought in, to revitalise the whole Apple store culture, and enthusiasm with Apple products in general.

I am also including a couple of links for anyone who cares enough to understand Angela to read them. It really sheds a lot of light on why she was brought in at the time, what she has been doing, and what her legacy likely will be.

http://fortune.com/2015/09/10/angela-ahrendts-apple/

http://fortune.com/2015/03/26/tim-cook/

 

That seems like mere speculation given the fact that Jobs is dead, so we'll never know. I saw no indication that Apple had somehow plateaued with Steve. Who knows that Apple wouldn't be even further if Steve was still around pushing everyone toward new concepts and greater designs?

And I know, I'm speculating, too.

--- Post Merged, Feb 7, 2019 ---

I'm sure there are many who do things for just that reason. It's hard to reach those heights without an ego to push you that far, I'd guess. At the same time, I also think that there are complementary personalities that work well together, and a driven personality may well naturally desire someone more stable to offset the constant pushing of their own persona. My wife is the perfect example. She is a GREAT VP for her company. She's organized, detailed and works incessantly to make sure that stuff gets done to help accomplish the purpose and vision of her company.

She would make a lousy CEO. She's driven to get things done well, but doesn't have the personality to push other people toward the vision. She's a good cheerleader in many respects, but won't easily risk alienating people around her to get what she wants. Steve didn't seem to have that reservation.

 

"Prior to that HR role, O'Brien had been senior vice president of worldwide sales and operations. Apple has a lot of vice presidents, though, and when she spoke to the East Bay Times in early 2016, she was a vice president working on the supply chain operations team."

There is more information about her background in this AI article but I see very little (actually, nothing) there about retail.

 

"People come to Apple to do the best work of their lives"... How arrogant. I guess the idiot who rejected a submitted GPS app because they had no clue what the review notes meant (describing the GPS features and testing on GPS and non-GPS equipped hardware) was doing the best work of their lives. Or the idiot that rejected an app that properly notified the user that an internet connection was required (the reviewer actually sent me a screen shot with the error message AND admitted the device was NOT connected to the internet) was also doing the best work of their lives....

I've worked at both very large and very small software companies. Small companies submitting apps to Apple have to slog through the Sheet pile of Apple's incompetence. While rare, I did encounter a few instances of app review incompetence when working at large companies, but those problems were solved by a five minute phone call.. yes, large companies can call someone at Apple who answers the phone and solves the issue within minutes.. meaning: the app is in the store within minutes.

So in this case, "People come to Apple to do the best work of their lives" means Apple's best days are behind it.

Well, Upgrading the on-line store shopping 'cart' to the 'stylish' shopping 'bag' will certainly be the best work of Ahrendts' life.

 

Is company a metaphor for your household?

 

LOL. No, she’s the top dog here!

Company is a finance group. She’s a veep who oversees operations in several offices.

 

There is a lot unsaid about her departure. One of the business insiders will probably publish something soon.

 

• Centralized register - I hate having to pool around a special table to get someone to take my damn money or try and make eye contract and get someone to pull out their POS hand-held at some random location in the store
• Perhaps it's the limited space at the new Michigan Ave Store but: no customer bathrooms, not even a customer water fountain?

Two strikes!

 

I'm glad to see they promoted someone from within. Deirdre has been at Apple for 30 years. It sucks when companies try and bring in the saviors with the bloated resumes.

 

Apple needs to get rid of the whole.. "Go wait over there, by that table" while there are 10 employees standing around doing absolutely nothing.

 

Under the previous Head of Retail, Apple Stores were great. I really felt they went the extra mile. When he went it started going downhill

 

And, Rene Ritchie is on the case: https://m.imore.com/angela-ahrendts-leaving-apple-whats-going-and-why

If Apple is not paying him for PR work, they are getting free labor.

He’s a propagandist.

 

A mistake reviewing an app is different than a strategy mistake at the top. But Tim Cook espousing the company’s tag line I don’t view as arrogant. YMMV.

That’s one way to spin it

I would like to get paid like that for a seemingly simple change of art on a website.

--- Post Merged, Feb 9, 2019 ---

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Even the free labor involved in anti-Apple dissertations.

 

Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

It's always interesting when there is a pundit who defends Apple even harder than Apple seems to defend itself and continuously makes excuses for the company.

There is a difference between being an honest player making a good faith argument and a shill or hack. Ritchie is the latter, although I understand you'd prefer to paint him as the former.

 

Correct. And I understand you paint him as the latter. Different subjective opinions about subjective opinions. There are shades of grey in many of these “discussions”, not black and white.

 

Sure. I'm happy to read any examples of Rene Ritchie criticizing Apple without excusing them at the same time. That's about as close as he ever gets.

Example: Here's what he says, after explaining all the great things Ahrendts has done:

"some (problems) have been exacerbated under her watch (the criticism) AS APPLE HAS CONTINUED TO SCALE AT A RATE THAT CAN ONLY BE PROPERLY DESCRIBED BY A MADE UP WORD...RIDONCULOUS" (the excuse). This is about the 5:50 mark of the latest YouTube video.

Seemingly a nice guy. For sure a shill.

 

That’s his take. Again his opinion. Calling him a shill doesn’t make it so because it’s fair to criticize and excuse at the same time. (See much of the commentary about jobs, for example) there is always positive and negative in these high mgmt positions. Depends on if you view the negatives as failures or there were mitigating circumstances. Much is subjective.

 

I consider myself an apple apologist and dare I say a sheep but he's something else.

I enjoy a lot of his content regardless

 

On Apple parlance "leaved her position to pursue new professional interests" means "kicked out for failing to do the job properly". Retail is not all about greenery and "leisure hub" or ripping your customers off like requesting 1K+ bucks for the repair that otherwise would cost nothing or minuscule part of it, you know.

"People" = "employees".

The phrase "I am thrilled to work alongside Deirdre in her new role, and I know our 70,000 retail employees will be, too" is scary. How do you know and what if they won't? Then what?

#VoiceOfPowerNotMorals

 

I don't think you understand. The countless mistakes made by clearly incompetent app reviewers IS the result of a strategy mistake made from "the top". Apple has clearly forgot who enabled the success of the iPhone, and now they are paying the price.

And obviously she said "People", not "People at the top...".

 

What countless mistakes? What strategy from the top? Seems like all this post is is some straw-man. And how exactly is apple paying the price?

 

The App Store has effectively commoditised apps. If one developer leaves, there are 10 waiting to take his place. I don't think you understand who holds the power in this relationship. It's certainly not the developers.