Re: Apple App Store
Derek Caisse
This promotional AppleCare+ Education Pricing is applicable only to two-year paid upfront AppleCare+ for iPad and three-year paid upfront AppleCare+ for Mac and is not applicable to any recurring payment AppleCare+ plans. In select Retail stores, the AppleCare+ Education Pricing may be available on select recurring payment AppleCare+ plans for iPad and Mac.
To access and use all Apple Card features and products available only to Apple Card users, you must add Apple Card to Wallet on an iPhone or iPad that supports and has the latest version of iOS or iPadOS. Apple Card is subject to credit approval, available only for qualifying applicants in the United States, and issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch.
The Apple Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell, service and repair various Apple products, including Mac desktop and MacBook laptop personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad tablet computers, Apple Watch smartwatches, Apple TV digital media players, software, and both Apple-branded and selected third-party accessories.
The first Apple Stores were originally opened as two locations in May 2001 by then-CEO Steve Jobs, after years of attempting but failing store-within-a-store concepts. Seeing a need for improved retail presentation of the company's products, he began an effort in 1997 to revamp the retail program to get an improved relationship with consumers and hired Ron Johnson in 2000. Jobs relaunched Apple's online store in 1997 and opened the first two physical stores in 2001. The media initially speculated that Apple would fail, but its stores were highly successful, bypassing the sales numbers of competing nearby stores and within three years reached US$1 billion in annual sales, becoming the fastest retailer in history to do so. Apple has expanded the number of retail locations and its geographical coverage over the years, with 530 stores across 27 countries and regions worldwide, opening its latest store in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on June 22, 2024.[1][2] Strong product sales have placed Apple among the top-tier retail stores, with sales over $16 billion globally in 2011.
In May 2016, Angela Ahrendts, Apple's then-Senior Vice President of retail, unveiled a significantly redesigned Apple Store in Union Square, San Francisco, featuring large glass doors for the entry, open spaces, and rebranded rooms.
Many Apple Stores are located inside shopping malls, but Apple has built several stand-alone flagship stores in high-profile locations. It has been granted design patents and received architectural awards for its stores' designs and construction, specifically for its use of glass staircases and cubes. The success of Apple Stores has had significant influence over other consumer electronics retailers, who have lost traffic, control and profits due to perceived higher quality of service and products at Apple Stores. Apple's notable brand loyalty among consumers causes long lines of hundreds of people at new Apple Store openings or product releases. Due to the popularity of the brand, Apple receives many job applications, many of which come from young workers. Apple Store employees receive above-average pay, are offered money toward education and health care, and receive product discounts; however, there are limited or no paths of career advancement. A May 2016 report with an anonymous retail employee highlighted a hostile work environment with harassment from customers, intense internal criticism, and a lack of significant bonuses for securing major business contracts.
Many Apple Stores are located inside shopping malls, but Apple has several stand-alone flagship stores in high-profile locations, such as the one located in Grand Central Terminal in New York City.[3] Several multi-level stores feature glass staircases,[4][5][6] and some also glass bridges.[7] The New York Times wrote in 2011 that these features were part of then-CEO Steve Jobs' extensive attention to detail,[8] and Apple received a design patent in 2002 for its glass staircase design.[9][10][11] Historically, Apple has partnered with architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in designing and creating its original retail stores, and has in recent years partnered with architectural firm Foster + Partners in designing its newer stores, as well as its corporate Apple Park campus.[12]
Apple has received numerous architectural awards for its store designs,[13][14] and its "iconic" glass cube, designed in part by Peter Bohlin,[15][16] at Apple's Fifth Avenue store in New York City, received a separate design patent in 2014.[17][18][19]
Due to the popularity of the brand, applicants for jobs at Apple Stores are numerous, with many young workers applying.[30] The pace of work is high due to the popularity of the iPhone and iPad.[30] Employees typically work for only a few years as career prospects are limited with no path of advancement other than limited retail management slots.[30] Apple Store employees make above-average pay for retail employees and are offered benefits including 401(k) plans, product discounts, and reduced price on stock.[30] The retention rate for the technicians who staff the Genius Bar is more than 90%.[30][31]
A May 2016 Business Insider article featured a lengthy interview with an anonymous Apple Store retail worker in the United Kingdom, where the employee highlighted significant dissatisfaction and issues for retail workers, including harassment and death threats from customers, an intense internal criticism policy that feels "like a cult", a lack of any significant bonus if a worker manages to secure a business contract worth "hundreds of thousands", a lack of promotion opportunities, and are paid so little that many workers are unable to buy products themselves even with a "generous" discount on any Apple product or Apple stock.[32]
According to an April 2022 press release, over 70 percent of the eligible employees in the Apple Store located in the Cumberland Mall in Atlanta, Georgia, have signified interest in unionizing. The employees asked for a $28 per hour wage, better benefits, and profit-sharing. If successful, the effort would make the store the first unionized Apple retail store in the United States.[33]
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, returned to the company as interim CEO in 1997. According to his biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs began a concerted campaign to help sales by improving the retail presentation of Macintosh computers. Even with new products launched under his watch, like the iMac and the PowerBook G3 and an online store, Apple still relied heavily on big-box computer and electronics stores for most of its sales. There, customers continued to deal with poorly trained and ill-maintained Mac sections that did not foster customer loyalty to Apple and did not help differentiate the Mac user experience from Windows.[61][62] In fact, the retailer trend was towards selling their own generic in-house brand PCs which used even cheaper components than those by major PC makers, increasing retailer overall margins by keeping the manufacturing profits. This "provided a powerful profit motive to convert customers interested in buying a Mac into the owners of a new, cheaply assembled, house brand PC".[63]
Between 1997 and 2000, the number of Mac authorized resellers dropped from 20,000 to just 11,000. The majority of these were cuts made by Apple itself. Jobs proclaimed that Apple would be targeting Dell as a competitor, with Cook's mandate to match or exceed Dell's lean inventories and streamlined supply chain. Jobs made an open statement to Michael Dell, "with our new products and our new store and our new build-to-order, we're coming after you, buddy." While Dell had operated as direct mail order and online order company, having pulled out of retailers to realize greater profit margins and efficiency, Apple had direct orders with sales handled by its channel partners, other mail order resellers, independent dealerships, and the new relationship with CompUSA.[63]
A revised concept for an Apple "store-within-a-store" was designed by Eight Inc., a San Francisco-based firm who had developed Apple's presences at the MacWorld expo; they were designed as a self-contained showroom with more minimalistic design that emphasized the products themselves. After a trial at retail outlets in Japan, CompUSA began to adopt the new concept for its locations beginning in 1999.[65][66] The "store within a store" approach still had shortcomings; acting as a mystery shopper, Macworld writer David Pogue observed that all but one of the locations he visited had employees who actively steered him towards Windows PCs and attacked Macs (such as claiming they did not have software available); the company's PR director Suzanne Shelton stated that finding "specialized" talent was difficult. Despite this, CompUSA sales of Macs had increased. Apple then added Best Buy as a second authorized reseller.[64] Challenges still remained, as resellers' profit margins on selling Macs was only around 9%, and selling Macs was only worthwhile if ongoing service and support contracts were provided, of which retailer experiences were inconsistent.[65]
In 1997, the year Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell was asked how he would fix Apple. Dell responded: "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders". This angered Jobs, due to Dell's success with its online store originally built by NeXT, his former business that Apple acquired to bring Jobs back. A team of Apple and NeXT employees spent several months building an online store that would be better than Dell's. On November 10, 1997, Steve Jobs announced the online store at an Apple press event, and during his keynote speech, he said: "I guess what we want to tell you, Michael, is that with our new products and our new store and our new build-to-order manufacturing, we're coming after you, buddy."[67]
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