The stand-alone stores definitely can and do use more natural light, but it's not fair to say that they largely do that, as there are still a ton in shopping malls and I guess airports and shit.
Apart from the entire glass front facade that opens up to the street, two story interior, and a glass staircase that goes up to an entirely new area where people can charge their devices and work on things inside the store it looks the same.
I taught those for almost 5 years, I loved that job. Had some absolutely lovely seniors that I worked with regularly.
And then shortly after I quit they completely changed the program getting rid of the 1to1’s and went completely to workshops (which I hated teaching… people wanted to come to get questions answered or have someone walk them through a project at their own pace, not sit through a lecture.) Made me so sad. Apple did so many things right with the retail stores in the earlier years, only to slowly strip away so many of the things that made it great.
I taught those for almost 5 years, I loved that job. Had some absolutely lovely seniors that I worked with regularly.
And then shortly after I quit they completely changed the program getting rid of the 1to1’s and went completely to workshops (which I hated teaching… people wanted to come to get questions answered or have someone walk them through a project at their own pace, not sit through a lecture.) Made me so sad. Apple did so many things right with the retail stores in the earlier years, only to slowly strip away so many of the things that made it great.
Let’s agree to disagree. The first Apple Stores had wooden floors that were switched out for the grey Italian tiles somewhere in the mid 2000’s. The products in the early days were black or white or whatever boxes the came in. Apple contracted with them to change the packaging to white boxes so they would match perfectly marketing guidelines. They used to have a kids section with iMacs table with black ball stools for the kids to sit on - these sections no longer exist. The stools at the Genius Bar were all wood and black. Now the seats are a blonde wood with chrome metal legs. I could go on, but I believe you can see my take on this since I worked at an Apple Store through all of these remodels and changes. Basic layout is similar, but has changed very much.
Apple basically bought a quarry in Italy to make these tiles. So beautiful and luxurious until someone spills something on them and you realize they absorb stains to an nth degree and have to have a specialized team flown in to fix.
Sometimes overnight when it’s something like blood, which is more common than you’d think.
On the flip side, most of the tables are/were made by a family owned company by a dad and son duo and they hired help as the orders got bigger.
Silk was also stretched over the lights to diffuse harshness.
I would expect design skills to be significantly upgraded. The new store design is likely precision designed to crowd control and behavior control. And of course influence senses through design and also secret tech that apple has. Their chip can gently massage the user's inner experience plane.
They nailed the general aesthetic out of the gate but newer stores are generally much larger and don't don't have all of those printed signs (turns out the products themselves have screens). They also don't have giant sections of boxed software and printers for sale.
My parents got a flower power iMac around that time which had both OS9 and the OSX beta. It felt cool being able to bounce back and forth between the two, especially because OSX felt so futuristic at the time.
I always felt bad that it seemed like every treadmill in the country was changed to include the old Apple 30-pin connector right before Apple switched to Lightning cables.
I work in audio video and I still come across so many products with iPod docks. It was like every audio/video product sold in that time period came with an iPod dock or it had an external iPod dock accessory.
Last week I was installing a new router and access points at a clients beach house. I opened up their av cabinet and they had 3 different iPod docking products and a few different Sirius XM satellite radio receivers. Everything was plugged in and powered up which I thought was funny. It's probably been 15 years since anyone used those iPod docks or the satellite radio receivers.
I’m sure they have a chunk of subscribers who pay the $30-40/mo rack rates without noticing it that make up a large portion of their revenue. As opposed to people like me who get on chat once a year to threaten to cancel until they lower my price to $6/mo 😂
I recall going to get a work-provided phone swapped out as the battery was swelling and the dude took it into the back, came back empty-handed (I was concerned..) and then went to some random thing that seemed like a table and was like surprise secret drawer full of iPhones!
I had a similar experience: after paying for something the Apple guy opened a secret drawer in the table and removed a bag and receipt from a hidden storage area.
I worked at JCPenney when Ron Johnson took over who I think helped design the Apple Store layouts. JCP wanted to bring something similar so they started construction in their store to build like hubs and move towards mobile checkouts. It was a failed attempt but I remember them showing the plans of what they hoped to look like and it seemed cool but JCP tried to do too much combining this with getting rid of their sale prices.
These images just made me think of my time there. Carry on.
The Ron Johnson "Fair and Square" era was the only time I shopped at JCPenney. As soon as they fired him they immediately raised their prices and then put things on "sale" for higher than they had been the week before. Never been back.
I remember when they got rid of the sales/coulons we went through the whole store and repriced everything to what the sale prices originally wad but there was something about the mentality of seeing 25% off that the customers just couldn’t get behind but the prices were the same.
I was at the opening of the first Apple Store - in Tysons Corner, VA. Here's my photo gallery of the event, taken with my Apple QuickTake 200 digital camera on May 19, 2001.
I mean sure, they had that Jony Ive makeover a decade ago but apart from super niche details like the hole down the center of the table where the chargers plug in being perfectly aligned with the floor tiles and the light fixtures it’s just an evolution of the same basic theme and it’s hard to tell much of a difference.
Go watch the introduction to the first Apple Store from 2001 if you want to see something that looks wildly different. It’s funny that in the 2-3 years that it took to go from a one-off concept location to having one in every mall the visual aesthetic changed more than it has in the past 20 years.
20 years ago, preteen me thought it was funny to go on all the computers and laptops (can’t recall if the names MacBook and iMac were a thing at that point) and delete all the files. It was pretty much just generic iTunes music that likely no one looked at anyway, but it still made me feel cool lol.
Unrated but this makes me think of a fun lil story. Canadian for context. I lived with an international student from Ukraine, I took him to a cannabis store one weekend and he was losing his marbles and said “dude, it’s like an Apple Store in here!!”
I worked there back then, peeling off those Velcro banner ads on the wall created so much static electricity that one time I could visibly see the arc and hear the snap from my finger next to a display device lol. Fun times. Also ouch.
I was in an Apple Store in December of last year for the first and only time. Other than the second and third pictures, I don't see any difference between the store I was in and what's shown in the pictures.
I miss that era of the apple store. I used to go to the one in the Houston Galleria with my girlfriend. Probably drove her nuts lusting after the latest macbooks (I wanted one of the blackbooks).
I believe that store closed when they opened their huge shop in Highland Village, which was entirely made of glass, which within a couple of weeks they had to renovate because it turns out putting a giant glass cube in the middle of the hot Texas sun turns it into big-ass oven.
This takes me back. I remember going to the Apple Store on a field trip in my media class during high school to learn how to use the editing software on the Macs! We got to play with all the iPhone 3s and 4s!
Did anyone ever attend summer camps they had at the stores? I went to one that was about iMovie and made my own short film when I was 7 orb8! Got to watch others films they made and it was pretty fun!
Steve Jobbs was greedy but he always valued innovation over greed. Tim Cook's Apple is just greed with little to no innovation.
Like the apple watch was something that Jobbs was already developing before he passed so I don't associate it to Cook. The Vision Pro is just a dumb thing to own and only weirdo Apple fanatics own them really. They don't actually have a practical usecase. The earbuds with cameras seems like it will be a very bad idea as well. Intrusive technology that is designed to violate people's privacies...
I don't even know if Apple stores still hold educational consortiums anymore. I remember the Apple stores in silicon valley would hold educational talks about research and development and things like that. They even held demos of some of their products and things like that. I haven't heard of any of those things happening in awhile but at the same time I don't look for them.
I just happened to be in town when the Tyson’s Corner store opened in Virginia. It was either the first or second store to open. My wife went shopping in the mall while I waited an hour to get in. It was marvelous! Those in line got asked by passerbys what we were waiting on. Then they would walk away shaking their head when we told them.
They do, but it's fairly location-dependent for how often they do it. My mom went to one to learn how to use some of the features on her iPhone, back in the day
I had the last year 17" MBP 2.5 GHz, was very good to me. Sold it on eBay two years later for roughly 75% what I paid new, retail. That was my last apple product
I walked past one in a mall the other day and it was like super sparse even in terms of merchandising you can even look at. No front desk. What a shell of itself
I work very close to the first Apple Store in Glendale, CA. I remember walking past the location as they built it and thinking it was interesting that they were going back to having stores selling their products.
I was gonna say "they still look like that" then I realized the last time I was in one was probably 20 years ago and I have no idea what they look like now.
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u/OtherAlan 23h ago
It hasn't changed much.
Apple store in San Francisco union square.