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From Risky Bet to Retail Giant: Apple Store Turns 24 Today
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I opened one of the early stores waaaaay back in 2001. Went through some great training, traveled to Cupertino, and spent a couple of years as a Mac Genius, and left the store before iPhones came along
For a while it was good, but eventually the customers got entitled and abusive. I had people screaming at me all day for some imaginary issue with iPods, or refusing to accept that beer spilled in a laptop wasn’t a manufacturer's defect, or that the thousands of downloaded porn images on the desktop “just happened”
I still have low level PTSD from the experience. I have friends who stayed longer, and were broken by the increasingly bad conditions
I’d never do it again
For a while it was good, but eventually the customers got entitled and abusive. I had people screaming at me all day for some imaginary issue with iPods, or refusing to accept that beer spilled in a laptop wasn’t a manufacturer's defect, or that the thousands of downloaded porn images on the desktop “just happened”
I still have low level PTSD from the experience. I have friends who stayed longer, and were broken by the increasingly bad conditions
I’d never do it again
Thanks, it was just an uneducated guess on my part. The other cheap stock I was thinking about buying at the time but didn’t was some newby car company called Tesla 🤦♂️ Doh!
I guess they wanted the CA store to be the first on the list since they are a CA company.
Yep the early ones were wood, not unlike a dance floor. The marble came later on.
Super cool, but have to remember those were completely different times. The Mac line now is more like an iPhone or iPad with regards to few user (or even field tech) user serviceable parts, and components are a lot more solid state. Mac Studio and Pro are exceptions but I would imagine those have local or regional specialists and more uncommon to show up at a store for support.
iPods are gone, the Apple TV since Gen 2 doesn't have hard drives, Fusion drives are long since dead, the consumer iMac, Mac mini, and most laptops are mostly a logic board with everything soldered to it, a keyboard, screen (Laptops and iMac only) and battery.
Sending anyone other than trainers, or special techs to Cupertino makes little sense.
I’ve been around long enough to remember the hellscapes in the early days. Independent dealers with widely varying technical skills and customer service. Sears stores, CompUSA stores, Fry’s Electronics stores and others where the Apple products were located in the very back of the store and sales clerks with little to no training, let alone interest, in customers looking at Apple gear. The haters back then would go to these stores daily and count the boxes on the shelves to justify their claim that no one was buying Apple products.
And when the Apple Stores did start opening it was nothing but rage coming from these losers about Apple taking business away from them. Those days are gone but the haters are still out there doing their thing.
And when the Apple Stores did start opening it was nothing but rage coming from these losers about Apple taking business away from them. Those days are gone but the haters are still out there doing their thing.
I started in 2010 and worked there up through the pandemic. I really noticed a difference in the way customers treated us when the iphone 5 launched. it was on basically every carrier so our traffic increased significantly.
during that time we had employees physically assaulted, stalked, berated, etc due to "perceived issues". Their carriers just tell them to show up and apple will replace it. and for some reason they trust their carriers more than apple.
working through the pandemic was it. It broke me as a human. The amount of customers screaming about masks, joe biden, trump, etc was insane. The apple store is not a place to take a political stand. This was also the time period I had to have a police escort to my car for a month due to death threats from a guy who said he was going to kill me in his detractor comment because I wouldn't replace his phone that fell off a rollercoaster for free.
I got close with the leadership at that point and when I saw how many metrics they tracked each employee on I knew I had to leave. I think it was over 20 different metrics. This way you could fire anyone for not liking them if one of their metrics were down. Taking 60 appointments a day with an NPS over 80 is not good enough anymore. I cant imagine what its like now.
I have severe social anxiety from dealing with those customers. Prior to that I was genuinely outgoing, had tons of friends. Now I can barely hold a conversation with someone. Thank god I met my wife before working there lol.
This reminded me of the Shop Different app, which lets you virtually walk around some of the key historic Apple Stores from different points in time. Pretty nice bit of nostalgia:
departmentmap.store
The Apple Store Time Machine
An interactive experience that recreates memorable moments in Apple history with painstaking detail and historical accuracy.
departmentmap.store
The best thing about Apple Stores were the look of them, able to try out the products and those free courses. They felt welcoming and you really wanted to have a look around.
Sales and tech help on the other hand… Most don’t know what they’re talking about. There were many times a sales rep was telling a customer the wrong thing and I had to correct them. There were quite a few times I had to tell the tech rep what to do, or they would just do a Google search on how to fix an issue.
Sales and tech help on the other hand… Most don’t know what they’re talking about. There were many times a sales rep was telling a customer the wrong thing and I had to correct them. There were quite a few times I had to tell the tech rep what to do, or they would just do a Google search on how to fix an issue.
Steve jobs was a visionary genius, but TBF at the time they were basically just selling computer and a dedicated store to 1 brand of computer wasn't really justifiable. It would make more sense to concentrate on the 1000s of stores already spread nation wide like best buy, walmart, etc. Do they still have the Apple genius?
notice how he picked up the apple laptop to demonstrate wireless internet 💀
your initial $1200 investment is worth $400,000 now? 👀
were you really geniuses or were you just a taught a thing or two on how to fix a problems? I do not assume you can make someone Apple genius in 3 months training program.
notice how he picked up the apple laptop to demonstrate wireless internet 💀
your initial $1200 investment is worth $400,000 now? 👀
were you really geniuses or were you just a taught a thing or two on how to fix a problems? I do not assume you can make someone Apple genius in 3 months training program.
Looking at the photo as well as the video of Steve giving the private tour (wish I'd been there!) at the Tyson's Corner Apple Store brings a tinge of nostalgia and fond memories, not only of that time period, but of the store itself. It is still in the Tyson's Corner Mall, but now has moved to another location within the mall. Somehow, visiting it these days is just not quite the same.....
For a little more perspective, I remember walking from a bustling Apple Store here in Corte Madera into a then new Microsoft store cheekily located directly across from the Apple Store. It was quite amusing to browse the way-too-obvious copycat layout as tumbleweeds rolled past and employees stood around without anything to do.
I have two Apple stores not far away. I buy small parts like cables, connectors or iPhone covers there and go there to compare monitors or weights of say Air vs. Pro or sizes. I like that you don't have to buy things and are left alone if you want. The design is interesting with no visible cashiers but hidden special vaults.
It is remarkable that a computer company relies on real world stores and is so successful doing it.
It is remarkable that a computer company relies on real world stores and is so successful doing it.
The iPod might be the most importanr part of this story.
It came out 6 months after the first Apple Store and pulled a wave of non-Mac users through the doors that lasted several years.
Hard to say if the store would have succeeded without it. It would have certainly been much harder.
It came out 6 months after the first Apple Store and pulled a wave of non-Mac users through the doors that lasted several years.
Hard to say if the store would have succeeded without it. It would have certainly been much harder.
I agree with a few others that the store is quite bland, and I’ve never liked the open air environment.
In those days you had to have IT expertise to become a Genius. I’d been head of IT for a graphic design firm for a few years before I took the job at Apple. The pay at Apple was good, the benefits were good, and the design firm I’d been at was kinda hellish. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and gave me a foot in the door position in Apple that I was hoping to be able to use.
Ultimately the job became less expertise focused, and more processing hardware repairs and swaps. I left for a lot of reasons, including debilitating stress and death threats from customers, and moved on to less stressful pastures
In 2001 working at the store was a pretty peaceful and cool experience. It definitely did change when iPods became Windows compatible. That’s when it really picked up and started to resemble what it is now. We definitely made more Mac sales due to the “halo-effect” of iPods, and it really started to dominate the experience.
One Christmas Eve, there was a Level 3 Snow Emergency, which I ignored and drove to work anyway. The cops were supposedly going to arrest anyone who was out for non-essential purposes. I made it to work and was the second person there (my manager arrived before me). There were over 25 customers waiting at the gate to buy iPod Minis when I arrived. We couldn’t open until a third employee arrived (one to ring out, one to run stock, one to watch the floor for shoplifters [a constant problem])
It was insane how much the iPod dominated in those days