Former Apple Store employees from New York and Los Angeles filed a complaint in San Francisco federal court that claims Apple workers are being shorted around $1,500 a year in unpaid wages while they wait off the clock to have their bags searched.
The class-action suit claims that Apple’s “personal package and bag search” policy can cause staff members to stand around for 5 to 15 minutes every time they clock out to leave on a lunch break or at the end of a shift:
It’s hard to make a buck, especially in China. It’s also hard to get an appointment at the Genius Bar. It’s hard, then, to know where our sympathies should lie in this story: Chinese scalpers are apparently booking up all of the Genius Bar appointments in China and then selling them online at huge premiums. Oh wait, no, it’s not. Those scalpers are scumbags.
Apple’s CEO wants to sell more iPhones, but only in his stores. The iPhone is Apple’s cash cow with its high profit margins, and it creates a “halo effect” that causes customers to buy other Apple products.
Less than 20% of iPhones are currently sold in Apple Stores, and Cook won’t stand for it. Despite the fact that 80% of customers buy their iPhones elsewhere, 50% bring them into the Apple Store to get serviced. If Cook wants the sales/repairs ratio to improve, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
An Apple retail store in Bellevue Square Mall, Seattle, is one of 14 stores that have been flooded following heavy rain, Fox News reports. Fortunately there were no injuries, but all stores have suffered minor flood damage when storm drains became unable to handle all of the water.
During the WWDC 2013 keynote, Apple made sure to note on several occasions, that the new Mac Pro will support multiple 4k displays. As the current Thunderbolt display is due for an update, many have wondered whether Apple will update the Thunderbolt Display to 4k to go along with the new Mac Pro when it comes out in late 2013.
Shortages at third-party retailers can occasionally indicate whether Apple has a new product in the pipeline, so Glenn Künzler at MacTrast researched the current supply of Thunderbolt displays at third party retailers and found that supplies are beginning to dwindle. One retailer even confirmed that Apple is no longer allowing them to order the Thunderbolt displays.
Here’s are the retailers that are out of stock:
Apple is building a massive new store at the Stanford shopping center in Palo Alto to replace its smaller, more modest retail location a few hundred yards away. The new Apple Store is going up just a stones throw away from a big Microsoft Store that opened last spring.
The new flagship store is expected to be one of Apple’s largest ever, as it will enough extra floor space to test new product ideas. Designs for the store were completed and approved in 2011 by Steve Jobs, just six months before Tim Cook took over as CEO.
According to the Palo Alto Online, construction on the new store is happening seven days a week as contractors hurry to finish the 12,000 square-feet store. The store was supposed to officially open in November 2012, but the sensitive glass design of the building has caused delays.
Here are a couple photos of the store currently under construction:
The Apple Store is back online after a five hour downtime, and all of the exciting new products Apple unveiled today are there for sale.
There’s the new MacBook Air, with Haswell processors delivering all-day battery life, starting at $999. The new Haswell processors start at 1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, up from the Core i3s of the past generation. These are underclocked to save battery life compared to the previous generation, but it shouldn’t be an issue, due to the upgrade in the speed of the flash internals, which is the real bottleneck these days. Still, you can upgrade the processor to a 1.7GHz Intel Core i7 for just $150 more.
In addition the new AirPort Time Capsule (starts at $299) and AirPort Extreme (starts at $199) are up.
The new Mac Pro doesn’t have a page yet, but you can see a small shot of it in the top navigation bar of the Apple Store Mac section
Instead of just selling you a new phone, Apple is now doing in-store screen repairs on broken iPhones… and this is the monster machine doing the repairs.
Next time you drop your iPhone 5 and shatter the screen, you won’t have to pay a third-party to fix the display for you, or pay Apple the price of a new device to fix the screen for you. Instead, your friendly neighborhood Genius Bar will do it for $149.
Two weeks ago, plans for Apple to move its flagship retail store in San Francisco a couple blocks away to a new space in Union Square was met with a lot of positivity from politicians and city planners, and it seemed like a done deal. But perhaps not, because apparently, Apple’s plans for the new Apple Store also involve ripping up a beloved fountain currently on the same spot.
Apple is having some trouble with its signature store on 5th Avenue in NYC. The company rebuilt the glass cube above the store so it will have less seams, but ever since the renovation was finished Apple has had not one, but two leaks.
A rain storm hit New York City yesterday, and just like two weeks ago, the roof of the 5th Ave store began to bulge with large deposits of water that then leaked and flooded the lower level. To make matters worse, the roof of the Apple Store in SoHo sprung a leak too.
One Apple Store customer got the entire scene on video this time. You can watch the 5th Ave Geniuses scramble to solve the flooding after the jump:
Apple might unveil a new iPad mini at WWDC, but if the rumors are true that it might not have a Retina display, then you might want to consider getting a first gen iPad mini.
The Online Apple Store just dropped the price on all refurbished iPad mini and iPad 4 models today. The price drops aren’t huge (although a lot of models are not $100 cheaper than a brand new unit), but it’s a better deal than buying one brand new and you get the same warranty.
Here are the new prices:
Not only are Apple Stores some of the most popular retail stores on the planet, they’re also the most successful. This year Apple Stores have continued to outpace the entire industry, and as a result Apple is now making more money per visitor than ever before.
According to some analysis by Horace Dediu at Asymco, last quarter the number of Apple Store visitors grew 7%, and as a result Apple earned a record of $57.60 in revenue from each visitor.
Apple’s current flagship store in San Francisco is in something of a cramped location, so Apple wants to move it three blocks away, to Union Square.
T-Mobile had that slamming deal on the iPhone 5 to kick off its rebranding as “The Uncarrier” but those fun and happy days are all gone.
The Uncarrier has decided to bump up the down payment price of the iPhone 5 from $99 to $149 without ever really telling anyone that the $99 price was just a promotion.
Apple looks to be building another retail store in Beijing, which could open its doors in time for the launch of new iPhones and iPads this fall. Construction has begun on a building that bears a strong resemblance to a typical Apple retail outlet in Beijing’s China Central Place Shopping Center.
The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue is one of the most iconic retail stores on the planet, but a leaky roof caused everything to go into disarray on Tuesday morning as water poured into the store.
A small leak sent water pouring into the west side of the store this morning around 8AM. The New York Post reports that Apple employees quickly went to work on removing the water, but there were only about 15 customers in the store at the time.
There are 10 Apple stores in Germany, and another was opened today in the nation’s capital. After two years of construction, Berlin’s first Apple store was welcomed by thousands of eager customers and nearly 200 cheering employees. Lines started wrapping around the block 10 hours before the doors opened.
Working at the Apple Store has its benefits. You get sweet discounts on Macs and iPhones. You get to talk about Apple products all day. And you get an endless supply of cool Apple t-shirts.
A Genius Bar employee posted the photo above of all the t-shirt’s he’s received while working for the Apple Store at the Westchester Mall in New York. There’s 45 t-shirts total, though Apple’s had many more that aren’t pictured. Which one has been your favorite?
Click here for a higher res picture.
Source: Reddit
Samsung warned us that its Apple Store clones were on the way, and this week they’ve begun popping up in Best Buy stores across the United States. Dubbed “Samsung Experience Shops,” the locations give customers the chance to get their hands on Samsung smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other devices so that they can try them out before making a purchase.
Apple has updated its Apple Store app for the iPhone to introduce push notifications for delivery updates. So when you order an item from the Apple Store, you’ll receive updates on its delivery status without having to check manually. The Cupertino company will even let you know when your iPhone is ready for an upgrade.
The Genius Bar is a little sparse, and the flooring never would have been approved by Steve Jobs, but if you find yourself in Kabul with a deep thirst for the latest Apple gadgetry, the unofficial Apple Store of Afghanistan is the place to go.
While Apple has been busy dominating the retail world with its highly profitably shops, poor Afghanistan has been left without an official Apple Store to call its own, so someone decided to open one up.
Why is it that some people can walk into their local Apple Store with a broken MacBook and walk away with a free replacement, and other people are turned away, with Apple claiming the repair is due to user error… even if it isn’t?
It has less to do with whether or not you actually voided your warranty than if Apple thinks they can prove you voided your warranty. And the most important tool Apple uses to prove you’re responsible for the damage to your own machine? It’s a tool that inspects dents.
For the many years I lived in Berlin, one of the perpetual frustrations I had was that there was no Apple Store in the city to shop at. A few weeks after I moved, Apple leased a historical theater in West Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm and started renovating it to be the country’s biggest Apple Store.
Now the scaffolding’s coming off, ahead of the official launch, and iFun.de not only has some great pictures of the process of the newest Apple Store being revealed… there’s some video of the inside. Video after the jump.
Following yesterday’s horrific blasts that left three dead and over a hundred wounded at the Boston Marathon, the nearby Apple Street Boylston store has been closed temporarily.
