“Apple appears to be making a slight branding change to its retail business, dropping the ‘Store’ moniker when referring to its Apple Store locations,” Juli Clover reports for MacRumors. “Apple has already made the change online, and all of its store pages now refer to stores by names like ‘Apple Union Square’ or ‘Apple Valley Fair’ or ‘Apple The Grove,’ instead of ‘Apple Store, Valley Fair’ or ‘Apple Store, The Grove.'”
“It’s a change that appears to have started rolling out with the launch of the newer Apple Stores, like the Union Square location in San Francisco,” Clover reports. “Apple has always referred to that store as just Apple Union Square, and over the course of the last few days, the company has updated all of its retail store webpages to remove the ‘Store’ branding.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: They are more than just “stores,” so it make perfect sense not to call them that. It’s also a nice bonus to finally be losing that inelegant comma from the locations’ names.
OMG, Tim Cook is boycotting commas. Fire his ass now!!
It’s all his fault, anyways.
</s>
(in case somebody misses the sarcasm…)
Commas can cause problems in databases, as many queries and tables separate values by comma.
On the other hand, let us not denigrate the mighty Oxford comma! /grin
Is this what they pay the chick from Ball State for?
Yep… This is ALL he’s done.
First they change the pistol, now they banish the comma! Oh this is TOO much!
/s
Apple stores used to be more than stores, they were a techie’s dream. Classes were great, and Genius Bar folks were always ready to share tips and knowledge.
But those days appear to be past. Apple stores are rapidly becoming like any other fashion-forward retailer experience, except without the personal attention to detail that used to be Apple’s key differentiator. The changes Ahrends has made are mostly subtle and superficial, but the trend is clearly away from consumer education and experience, and more towards selling insanely overpriced accessories in high-cost architectural settings. Hurray for the architects, but boo for the lack of product knowledge, prices, and events.
It took how many tens of millions of dollars of obscene compensation for the marketing maven to push luxury over substance? This company is totally losing sight of what is important.
Also don’t bother to go to any Apple store with an iOS problem — they have only one solution to offer, and it’s exactly the same as a Windows product.
Well said sir, well said. Your analysis of the state of the Apple store is completely spot on. I remember back when the Apple stores were interesting places to be, where you learned more about the fantastic equipment you could buy there.
Now, it’s just a cesspool of bling and nonsense. I almost never go to the Apple store anymore.
It didnt have to be this way.
Paul, my experiences of the Apple Stores is not as harsh as yours, but, in general, I agree with your assessment.
One of the causes, other than the obvious and blatant move to selling gadgets rather than computers, is the change in who’s applying to work at the Apple stores. When the Apple Stores first appeared on the scene, the vast majority of people who applied to work there were Mac fanatics — people who had been using Macs since the Dark Day and some whose use dated back to the Mac’s introduction. Those people are very few and extremely far between these days. I have not met an Apple Store employee in the last year that started using Macs before the year 2000 — some that don’t even have a Mac at home. They’re now just hired sales people. And, the amount of training they get is poor — in many cases I know more about what’s going on than they do. In the last half dozen times I’ve had to go to an Apple Store it is solely for the purpose of using the tools they have available (depends on the store, not all have all tools) that I can’t get access to from home or work.
So yes, Apple’s focus has radically changed (for the worse, in my opinion), but it seems the pool of Apple users that have deep knowledge of Apple products just does not apply to work at Apple stores anymore.
On the other hand, I continually find the staff to be refreshingly friendly and focussed on having me be satisfied on my way out.
Disclaimer: I’m an Apple employee. Don’t know whether that colors anything about my “take”, but it might.
Anti-disclaimer: My non-Apple-employee sister (artist with a Law degree, of all things) keeps harping to me on her satisfaction with the Genius Bar folks.
I’m not sure where these are going… But every Apple store i’ve been in and sent people to… has always been a great experience.
I think it’s the self-righteous attitude of people that these experiences come from.
There used to be a time when you walked in and needed help and it took hours, if not days, to get a response.
In my opinion, and many others I know, Apple stores are way above and beyond what MOST people expect.
Take you’re Samsung phone in for repair…… Horror stories from mane people.
totally true, she should be canned immediately except Cook the shepard has delegated vision as he has none and, as many in the C-suite, want to protect their unearned fortunes. it is creepy to watch apple’s fall from excellence and retail under her leadership is the canary in the coal mine.
No one goes to Apple Stores any more. They’re too crowded. lol
I find them boring anymore. Buy through Angela’s crappy redesigned website and done.
Well said, Aldebaran. Indeed, when I come to the fork in the road regarding what I’d say on the topic, I take either to get to the destination of saying that I couldn’t have said it any better myself.