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Apple reinstalls dedicated Genius Bars where its stores' video walls now hang
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says the renovation also moves online order pickup and Today at Apple into ten-foot wooden bays along the sides of stores, with locked drawers for orders and instructors' devices.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in his Power On newsletter that Apple plans to accelerate store renovations over the coming years, with three major changes set for the renovated stores.
- Online order pickup and Today at Apple sessions, now handled at a dedicated table and a large seating area, move to the sides of stores in 10-foot sections Apple calls bays internally.
- Digital Trends, citing Bloomberg, says pre-opening staff meetings tighten: employees stay standing, skip beverages and devices, and applaud as the first customers enter five minutes early.
- Apple has already tested parts of the refreshed design internationally and plans a broader rollout across new and renovated stores over the next several years.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint A workshop that had a large seating area and shrinks to ten feet of wall can hold fewer people per session, so the store lead scheduling Today at Apple books smaller groups or more of them.
- decision Pickup built into locked drawers with one table in front becomes a fixed post rather than a floating task, and someone has to be rostered on it for every hour the store is open.
- precedent Giving the back wall to a service counter and printed posters leaves in-store campaigns without a motion surface, and sets the expectation that promotion happens in the Avenue bays.
- contradiction 9to5Mac's description of the Today at Apple bay lists a display and drawers; Digital Trends' lists seating and an instructor workspace as well, so whether the class keeps chairs is unsettled.
A customer collecting an online order in an Apple Store today walks up to a dedicated table on the floor [5]. In renovated stores that handoff moves to the side wall. The pickup bay is built entirely of wood, with a subtle Apple logo across the upper half, secure drawers below for orders, and a table in front where an employee manages the handoff [6]. Today at Apple gets a bay of its own, with a large display and secure drawers where instructors can store devices [7].
Both sit in the Avenue, the run of wall alongside the store where accessories and Apple services are promoted [3]. Each bay is ten feet, so twenty feet of that wall goes to collecting orders and running classes [17].
The change at the back of the room is bigger. The giant video walls come out of most stores, and they had been doing two jobs, display for Today at Apple sessions and marketing [8]. In many stores a dedicated Genius Bar goes in their place, with storage drawers and large posters highlighting new products on the wall behind it [9][11].
Gurman said Apple's goal is to realign its stores to focus on "more traditional and practical retail, service and fulfillment functions" [12]. Digital Trends writes that Apple spent much of the last decade trying to make its stores feel like more than places to buy an iPhone or get a Mac repaired [19], and dates the tech-hub redesign that brought more workshops, new educational spaces and Genius Grove to 2017 [13]. 9to5Mac puts the move away from the Genius Bar more than a decade back [10].
Neither report includes store traffic, repair volumes or pickup counts, so the floor plan itself is the only evidence on offer of what Apple now thinks the room is for. The Genius Bar, the function with the most staff time attached to it, gets the wall everyone sees on the way in.
What sorts a retail floor function is whether the person arrived already knowing what they want, and whether handing it over takes an employee's time. Order pickup answers yes, and almost none. It can live in a locked drawer with one table in front of it [6]. A repair answers yes, and a lot of it, so it gets a counter, at two heights, with drawers behind [11]. A workshop answers no on the first count, and in this plan it is the function that moves into ten feet of wall [5].
What to watch
- Whether Apple confirms any of it; both write-ups rest on Gurman's Power On newsletter, and 9to5Mac calls the changes rumored.
- Which international stores already carry the tested design, and whether their Today at Apple bay includes seating.
- Whether accessory display space shrinks as two bays take Avenue wall that promoted accessories and services.