Ian M Rountree

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The New Apple Store

November 3, 2009 by Ian Leave a Comment

We took our son through two of the malls on Halloween for safe trick or treating – a wonderful invention. However, one of the malls had Winnipeg’s new Apple Store in it, so naturally, I felt compelled to stop in and see what the fuss was about.

Turns out, not much.

The idea behind the Apple Store – or at least my perception of what it’s supposed to be about – is a different retail experience, the way that the Mac is supposed to be. Well, at least in Winnipeg, this fails. Walking into the bright, immaculate white mass of buzzing Apple commercial remixes and shiny-enamel-gadget felt like being in a classroom wit no teachers. Fifty-odd customers milling about, afraid to touch the perfect looking arrays of iPhones and iMacs and iPods; a wall of accessories poorly organized (I can tell from thirty feet when merchandising fails) and twelve – at my count – Apple Geniuses standing about NOT talking to customers.

Did I miss something? Is there a plan in this?

I was livid. There’s a certain standard of service to maintain if you want to do business well, and Apple makes a stink over their Geniuses being useful people. What I saw was either the new staff (it’s only been open a month) overwhelmed by a rush and not trying to fix anything – which looks bad to the customer, me. Or it was a habitual lack of good service sense, waiting for someone to let them know they’re buying before getting excited.

This is not what Apple’s commercials led me to expect.

Playing vulture is terrible; ignoring your job description is even worse. I’m not sure how intentional the air of superior aloofness was, but it was certainly off-putting. I’m aware that Apple is generally considered the computer company of elitist hipsters… But still. They’re doing nothing to advance their game by acting like elitist hipsters. Apple as a company may come off in its products and commercials as more human than “PC” – but the truth of it is that, in person, you still have to live up to your words.

I hope this gets fixed. I’m pretty unlikely to shop at the Apple Store at this point – I may order from the web, because I have before and it was a good experience – but the store has not made a good first impression.

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