Apple Job Listings Hint at Plans for Revamped Online Store

[JAT]

The Apple website is dated and a mess. Hopefully, as others have said, they'll find someone who can upload and replace pages instead of taking a site down for 6 hours to just change a few items.

I'm reasonably sure it is not a technological reason why they do that. Nor is it ever that long.

 

[Slurpy2k8]

You mean the big grey button that tells you to "BUY NOW"?

The Apple website is dated and a mess. Hopefully, as others have said, they'll find someone who can upload and replace pages instead of taking a site down for 6 hours to just change a few items.

Although as this has been this case for as long as I can remember I doubt hold out much hope.

Mess? It's probably the cleanest/most straightforward purchasing experience I've had online. As for the store going down.. I'm pretty sure that's intentional. You think Apple can't figure out how to update SKUs without that message, as millions of other 2 bit stores do? No, it's intentional and it serves a purpose. As soon as that sticker comes up, every tech blog on the internet posts about it, and its free PR and anticipation. Aso creates a clear time- buffer between old and new releases. Personally, I love it.

 

[FriarNurgle]

 

[thelonelylimo]

Mess? It's probably the cleanest/most straightforward purchasing experience I've had online. As for the store going down.. I'm pretty sure that's intentional. You think Apple can't figure out how to update SKUs without that message, as millions of other 2 bit stores do? No, it's intentional and it serves a purpose. As soon as that sticker comes up, every tech blog on the internet posts about it, and its free PR and anticipation. Aso creates a clear time- buffer between old and new releases. Personally, I love it.

exactly.

 

[Cagle]

maybe the store will appear on apple tv.

 

[G4DP]

I'm reasonably sure it is not a technological reason why they do that. Nor is it ever that long.

Yes it has been that long. When I was at Uni it was down for the entire day, and as I was there from 09:00 until 21:00, I think that is more than THAT long.

The only purpose it serves is for sad people without lives to get a hard on about what iToy a consumer electronics company is releasing. The free advertising line is a joke. Do you think the real world cares?. If people want to buy something they want to be able to do it, not wait hours for Jobs et al, to spout the next bunch of marketing twaddle to the public.

 

[CorporateFelon]

My guess is that Apple wants pages to format well on mobile devices so people can not only easily purchase software from the app store, but also hardware from the online store.

The scope of this job description doesn't address that at all. Though that would be a great idea. Totally different person needed, but great idea. Designer vs Developer.

 

[morespce54]

You mean the big grey button that tells you to "BUY NOW"?

The Apple website is dated and a mess. Hopefully, as others have said, they'll find someone who can upload and replace pages instead of taking a site down for 6 hours to just change a few items.

Although as this has been this case for as long as I can remember I doubt hold out much hope.

Upload and replace pages? It must have been a while since you have worked on a Website!

 

[RoelJuun]

Finding the aTV on the Dutch store is very hard to impossible. I'd like a redesign. The left column is a mess. The right column as well, all broken sentences.

The product info is great though. But please ad iDeal paying options to the Dutch store so I don't have to wait for my payment to arrive so that Apple can send my stuff directly!

 

[DrJohnnyN]

Pretty cool news.

 

[rdowns]

Maybe in future, the store won't go down for three hours when they change a price.

I'm convinced that's done more for marketing than technical reasons. Every blog posts a story within 15 minutes of the store going down.

 

[Awjvail]

I wonder if they've finally perfected technology that will allow them to launch a product without bringing the entire store offline for an hour.

It isn't just the store - it is also all of the software the CSRs use that comes down.

I was on the phone for an hour and half trying to get my USB cable replaced under warranty during the iPad 2 announcement... even the phone support people are locked out when the "We'll be back soon" post it goes up.

 

[ASKendrew]

Will be interesting to see what comes of this.

 

[Michael CM1]

I wouldn't put much stock in job listings. I can't tell you how many people want you to know to use such software "Microsoft." Maybe Apple hires intelligent people to write job ads, but many of them are copied and pasted from some form and then dazzled with multi-syllable words to make you think the job is something more than getting coffee for some guy.

 

[bassfingers]

The Apple online store is still the best in the business, in my opinion. Information about products is crystal-clear. The links between the product description pages and the store page are very easy to find. I've actually visited other electronics companies looking to buy a product (or at least look up the price) and gave up because I couldn't find the link to the store!

+1 here here!

 

[bassfingers]

compare shopping for a zune to shopping for an iPod. Fail fail fail fail fail fail fail crap stupid awful web design by microsoft compared to the apple store website

 

[AdeFowler]

I'm convinced that's done more for marketing than technical reasons. Every blog posts a story within 15 minutes of the store going down.

Absolutely, and I don't see that changing; it's become part of Apple folklore. However, the store is often down for maintenance or when the tax rate changes (I think the UK store was down on Sunday night).

 

[brewcitywi]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8C148a)

That can't be technically necessary! It's 99% marketing, in my opinion. Retail drama!