It's the blind assumption that if a UI was developed in the last year it is "Modern" and therefore automatically better. I guess there will be a phase of AI infused UI design to drag things further downhill. The equiavalent of a car saying: "We've noticed that you mainly use the Gas pedal, so we've made it bigger and put it right in the middle for you. Enjoy!". I am, of course, old and stuck in my ways ;-)
That is a fantastic analogy with modern UI design.
It’s a race to the bottom to simplify the most common use case for the most incompetent computer user.
To compound things, because everything is “engagement” driven, it means you have product managers place entirely unwanted features in prime real estate locations, often in jarring ways like with full colour animations, just to get people to use it. (Eg pretty much every AI feature in productivity tools).
There may also be a side business selling skin products to protect people who may be exposed to the radiation from this new reactor. Possibly people may even choose to vacation in areas of elevated radation, as it is likely to be warmer. Interesting...
There are plenty of things that I like to think I could probably turn my hand to and make a passable job of if I had to, but Illustration is not one of them. I would love to have to ability to visualise something and make it appear on paper like that, but no matter how hard I try I never will. The character and expression put into something that was probably a 30 minute sketch is quite amazing!
Slightly tangential rant, but is anybody else becoming frustrated with the process of buying Apple products in Apple stores? For me, it started with the Apple Watch - I knew which one I wanted and was ready just to head down and buy one, but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation on how to use the knob on the the side. Recently, I wanted to buy a new Phone. Again, I knew the one I wanted and was ready to part with cash and walk out with a box as quickly as possible - I approached a sales assistant, said: "Hi, I'd like to buy a new phone please" (or words to that effect) to be informed that if I didn't have an appointment, it would take half an hour or so to get somebody over. A random store nearby that also sold phones had no issue selling me one.
The whole experience of visiting an Apple store has changed from being something I looked forward to just another shopping chore. The VR headset is a case in point - if I want to be guided through the process, then I will ask for that. Otherwise, just sell me the damn product! I guess maybe I'm just not their target audience any more.
Yeah absolutely. Every time I’ve been in my local Apple Store, I’ve basically been talked out of purchasing, or it becomes a huge hassle of upselling and extra worrying charges, and quite frankly, stupidity and lack of knowledge from the pseudo-smart staff. All they can do is toe the party line and what they’ve been trained to say and do, which kind of falls apart when faced with someone who has used Apple computers and products for some 25 years now. Most recently I walked in and basically said “I would just like to buy this phone right now” when I wanted an iPhone Pro Max in a rush, and the hassle that I got led to me walking out and going to John Lewis (uk department store) next door, where I said “I would like to buy an iPhone Pro Max” and had one in my hands 90 seconds later and was paying for it, at £60 cheaper than Apple.
Apples pricing structure is also annoying nowadays too. As soon as one specs out and bumps a laptop, one suddenly finds that they may as well get a different laptop, ie once you bump up a MacBook Air, you may as well just buy a Pro, until all of a sudden your £999 purchase idea has turned into £3000 and a debate about AppleCare.
I’ve not had such a terrible experience but I’ve had the experience of being confused trying to work out how to buy something and the shop assistant being almost surprised that someone wanted to buy something instead of just looking at things. It was smooth enough after that but I would typically order online after that (which was mostly fine except for an annoying case where they would only deliver if I showed up in person)
People would probably like car dealerships a lot more if it was 'here's a bunch of cars you can look at, climb in and out of, and try out as much as you like as long as they don't leave the lot, and each has a specific listed price, take it or leave it'.
same here. i was able to skip a fitting for an apple watch when i told them i already measured. also with buying iphones outright i've never been hassled or up-sold. i've been going to my apple store in a medium sized american city for the past 10 years.
I've given up on simply walking into an Apple store to just buy something for the past few years. The closest you can get to this is by ordering online ahead of time, then walking into the store an hour later and picking it up.
I've walked into an Apple Store and told the person triaging people walking in, "I know EXACTLY what iPhone I want". They send me to the iPhone area where I have to wait in a queue behind 5 other people who need to be sold the damn iPhone. The customers I'm waiting for are either deliberating between a few different models or have no idea what they should get, so the people working in the store are busy talking to them for much longer than I care to wait.
I wish Apple would add a step to their triage to handle people who walk into the store and say, "I know EXACTLY what I want, _________"
Doesn't Apple have this step already? I'm talking about the online store with optional pickup in your Apple Store. I've ordered online whenever I exactly know what I want. No sales talk, no waiting. Pickup in store was fast and hassle free, but that might depend on store and time. Best of all: I know exactly that the item I want is available for me.
Meanwhile I had the opposite experience in a Google Store recently. I picked a phone case off the shelf in 10s, told the nearest employee I wanted to buy it, and he immediately whipped out a credit card scanner and I bought it right there in 30s. Didn't even need to go to the checkout counter or anything. It probably helps that that store is less crowded than the Apple store, but their training at least seems to involve making the purchasing flow as efficient as possible.
It’s a brave commenter who tries telling Apple they’re doing retail wrong.
I’d guess Apple wants to avoid their shops feeling like a supermarket, to avoid commoditisation. They want it to be like buying a work of art, where each one is unique and special. You need a knowledgable curator to guide you.
I know that for us on HN it’s all bullshit, but it’s a very, very successful strategy.
Its nothing new either, luxury brands (eyewear, purses, cars, whatever) have discovered this decades if not century ago, why do you think people actually buy say Versace suits?
And I disagree HN crowd 'looked through' this, the amount of tribalism and emotional irrationality that almost any Apple-related topic here brings is probably unparalleled.
I think the overall delayed and selective launch is attributed to the reasons you mentioned. They know they'll have to get this right 17 years after the initial iphone was released. I'd probably do the same thing if I were the head of commercialization/distribution. If they screwed this up (selling a few hundred Ks of units on a global release in the first few months), the stock will get hammered
Is that the lesson though? It seems people are falling over themselves to buy stuff at Apple stores despite these annoying and awful experiences, and Apple is the most valuable company in the world.
It seems the lesson is to treat knowledgable customers like morons using patronizing staff and try to upsell them as much as you can, even if it makes them leave the store in disgust.
Well, to be fair, they don’t know who’s knowledgable and who’s not?
I just order my stuff online, walk in, and pick it up. Not sure that it’s super frequent I have a “I need this hardware in 30 minutes or less” situation
Well, obviously not comparable. Price of case < salesman salary for the extra time << iPhone. So it does not make sense to invest extra time to get an upsell. If they can instead get you to spend an additional $100, then spending that extra time makes money.
TLDR: cheap stuff -> as quick as possible. Expensive stuff -> take time to ensure the sell and try for an upsell.
> Apples pricing structure is also annoying nowadays too. As soon as one specs out and bumps a laptop, one suddenly finds that they may as well get a different laptop, ie once you bump up a MacBook Air, you may as well just buy a Pro, until all of a sudden your £999 purchase idea has turned into £3000 and a debate about AppleCare.
Their pricing structure on basically all of their product lines is absolutely perfect from a capitalism/business perspective. They are so good at getting people to buy more than they need. It's impressive.
Well, it's not exactly perfect because I was in the mood to simply buy a basic Air, until I was pretty well talked out of it by sales staff, so instead of an easy £1099 in the till, in their attempt to turn that into £2500, they got £0. That isn't good business.
Also, the tedium of nowadays knowing that all the products will be bumped in spec in 9-12 months means that instead of excitement, buyer's remorse has already kicked in before reaching the store, for the savvy consumer midway though the product cycle. Again, not the result effective capitalism should be going for.
I wonder how representative you are of the average consumer though?
I imagine their pricing structure works well to upsell people on average, which is why they have maintained it for long.
Also, why would someone like you even go to the store; I had no issues whatsoever buying a macbook from their website. No reps, no nothing, I set my specs and clicked buy and a few days later had my product. I think most people with your profile probably buy online, and most people with the profile that fits store-goers are successfully upsold by the reps.
It is often that I see people on hackernews post as if the world was designed for them. When, in reality, they are most definitely the odd-man out.
"Also, why would someone like you even go to the store;"
Errrr, because I'm out shopping? And the store is located in a shopping centre amongst other stores where I'm buying things. I fully realise I can buy online, but I can buy vinyl records, sofas, groceries and shoes online, yet I'm often in the mood to walk in somewhere where they have those things available for sale and buy one. It can actually be quicker and easier.
I think you upset a lot of people on HN who maybe don't like the idea that some small part of how homeless people are excluded from society could be applied to them.
> wonder how representative you are of the average consumer though?
But Apple's target demograhic isn't the average person. Apple is particularly dependent on image, and one would think that they would want every customer to leave their store with a story about how awesome they are, to ensure that they keep their image polished.
Except pretty much every American has an iphone? How many americans have macbooks? Ipads? So it's most definitely for the average american. I mean, believe it or not, that's what the average american wants.
Their image is one of exclusivity, but products such as the iphone, macbooks, ipads are actually mass-market products. It's quite a remarkable thing, that the most luxurious phone you can get from Apple is what... 1500 dollars? That's affordable when you think of other luxuries, how expensive can a watch get?
I think saying apple doesn't make products for the average american consumer is really falling for their marketing. They make products that are on the upper-end of what average people can afford but they put a lot of care into presenting these as clean as possible so that people feel like they are buying into luxury. They're not in most cases.
In terms of the phone market, foldables are probably the most luxurious products right now. A foldable will run you 1800-2000 dollars for a product that you know is not designed to last more than 2 or maybe 3 years. In terms of laptops, how many people really spec out their macbooks? I would say people probably buy in the 1000-1500 range and laptops are long-lasting products. A gaming laptop can easily cost 2500+ dollars and will depreciate much faster.
So, I respectfully think you're misreading Apple's demographic. Their demographic is pretty much every adult in America and they tap onto that aspirational mindset to achieve it; which is why people who can kinda see through the bullshit might come out with the sensations that are being described in these comments.
I'm not even talking about salespeople upselling you in the store. I am just talking about how their product lines are priced.
For example, a maxed out MBA is just a few hundred short of a MBP. So you say to yourself, well why not just get the pro? That quickly turns into "well I can't get the base model macbook pro" and more. It's all designed so that the consumer instinctively upsells themselves before anyone in the store even tries to do so.
From a business perspective it’s hard to argue that their approach isn’t working even if they don’t sell to you that’s irrelevant the only thing the bottom line cares about is the totals not individual slaws.
A 50/50 chance to make close to 3x the profit is a huge net win for Apple. It’s also why they don’t cater to the low end of the market.
> A 50/50 chance to make close to 3x the profit is a huge net win for Apple.
Revenue, not profit.
And you're going to have to convince me that it's 50/50 that a consumer who came in looking to buy a $1,000 MBA is going to be convinced to walk out with a $3,000 MBP. Because I think that number is closer to 1 in 20 (and I think I'm still being generous there).
The MBP is both more expensive and has a higher profit margin, so when I say 3x the profit I do mean 3x profit.
Anyway, most people who walk in wanting a 1,000 MBA end up buying something even if it’s a 1,000$ MBA that’s just breakeven. So no they don’t upsell 50% on a 2.5k laptop with much higher margins, but that or no sale is not the only possibility.
Some people buy nothing or what the intended walking in, other people buy an 1k laptop with extended care, others by 2.5k laptops etc. So looking holistically if they lose 200 million in profit from lost sales but make it up with profit of 100 million in 3 different categories that’s a win.
PS: Something that’s not obvious is sales people don’t use the same pitch for everyone who walks in the door nor do they all execute every sale perfectly.
>in their attempt to turn that into £2500, they got £0. That isn't good business.
It IS good business. It's proven by the company's stock price and financial results. For every customer like you that leaves in disgust, there's 100 more that are happy to be upsold like this and empty their bank accounts. Consequently, Apple is the most valuable company in the world.
>Also, the tedium of nowadays knowing that all the products will be bumped in spec in 9-12 months means that instead of excitement, buyer's remorse has already kicked in before reaching the store, for the savvy consumer midway though the product cycle. Again, not the result effective capitalism should be going for.
Yes, it IS. Again, the company's financial results speak for themselves. Customers are happy to buy new Apple stuff every year, and the company is profiting enormously.
If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at all the idiots that buy into this.
Not necessarily. I already have a MBP but I wanted something lighter to bring to coffee shops or use in taxis, so I bought a nicely specced MBA. Yes I could have gotten a MBP for the same price but they’re literally different form factors and bigger isn’t always better.
Back in 2009, buying a MBP, the salesman questioned why a CS student would want a mac over a pc. Luckily for him I wasn't considering his thoughts. I definitely didn't need that powerful of a computer and glad I switched to an air a few years later.
I think part of my comment was broadly about their softly-softly approach to hard selling not actually working at all when someone simply walks in and says "I'd like to buy this right now"
This was exactly my experience trying to buy an Apple Watch from the Apple Store just before the pandemic. I had done all the research ahead of time and knew exactly what I needed. “Do you have an appointment?” No. “Oh, it’ll be about 45 minutes before someone can help you.” But I know what I want and just need you to ring me up. “I’m sorry, 45 minutes.”
Hands down the strangest retail interaction I’ve ever had. Frustrated, I went to the Best Buy literally in the mall’s parking lot and was on my way in under 10 minutes with the watch I wanted. I guess Apple still won here since I bought the product anyhow?
> “Do you have an appointment?” No. “Oh, it’ll be about 45 minutes before someone can help you.”
Ah, yes, the Ferrari customer experience. You need to be selected by the manufacturer to be allowed to buy their product. It makes the product feel rare and exclusive, and the customer feel "special", when it's a consumer product made by the same Chinese sweatshop workers that make your other e-waste.
It’s making a surface level imitation of behaviors, without understanding the underlying reasons, hoping for the same effect.
So maybe Jobs might have made experiences that looked superficially similar to this, but he would’ve done it in a manner that actually understood the customer.
How meta. It appears I’m guilty of cargo culting the phrase “cargo cult”, since I superficially use it to describe really any modern form of tech fad following, all in an attempt to be hip with “modern” terms.
I think it’s more than that; I suspect that they have pretty onerous internal store processes about inventory control and device transfer to minimize employee theft.
Or perhaps they know what Costco and Walmart and every other store knows: “Increased dwell time correlates to increased sales.” I suspect that waiting for the “Ferrari Experience” is a side show to the very real effect that the longer you spend in their stores, the higher affinity you will have for their products, during that visit or future visits.
Surely that only works if you have a pleasant experience and linger willingly. Then you develop positive associations with the store and the products.
If you have a negative experience from being forced to wait, then that's a different animal. How many of us relish the idea of visiting the DMV after previously experiencing long lines?
And yet they were still one of the companies most noted for their onerous 'unpaid bag check' stuff.
At some point you either have to point to their inventory system being a problem, and/or them having a very low trust view of their employees, and it's the customers who get to waste their time as a result.
The difference here is that you can only get a Ferrari from a dealer. Apple products aren't exclusive to Apple stores, so driving away customers eager to shell out money doesn't seem optimal.
Tbh it may well be better to forgo their retail margin to get better placement in other stores. If an Apple store was the best place to buy them why would anyone else carry them?
If you want to buy an iPhone with minimal interaction, just use the website or app, for in store pickup. Takes no time at all!
I will agree that it’s ridiculous for customers to have to wait for an appointment to buy a watch band, which I’ve seen. There were several employees standing around at the time, inexplicably.
you know, i tried this first time recently. placed order at 10am. no pickup that day. ready at 1pm next day! go to store. had to wait ten minutes after i wated at the door to checkin my appt (why). whole time employees small talking me. guy finally finds my box and shoves it in my hands and i was finally free from that cursed overpriced garbagehole
Pretty similar experience buying a studio display, except the wait time was at least 40 minutes for them to get the box with the only monitor in their stock room. I expected 10 minutes at most.
My last 4 purchases from the Apple Store were terrible experiences that all took nearly an hour.
Do you know if the item was in stock at that store? I've been able to do same-day pickups, even right after an item was launched. Not all variants are in stock, of course.
I'll take this over waiting in a long line or not knowing if they have what I'm looking for.
I picked up a MBA and had a similar experience. It just takes 5-10 minutes for someone in the stock room to find the thing and carry it out to me. 10 minutes feels like a reasonable amount of time. I guess best buy has a slightly better system?
It seems unintuitive, but the fastest way to get an iPhone when you're standing in a store may be to pull out your phone and make a purchase on the website.
This won't always be the case (I've never been told I needed an appointment to buy an iPhone, and I've bought them at several different Apple Stores over the years), but if you run into an intransigent employee, give this a try.
At the very least, the employees should be trained to tell people about the in-store pickup option. That would avoid leaving a bad taste in the mouth of customers who just want to get in and get out.
> At the very least, the employees should be trained to tell people about the in-store pickup option.
If they were going to train employees to tell customers about that, they could also just... let their employees ring someone up without an appointment. It would take exactly as much time as explaining the work around would, and would be even less likely to leave a bad taste in a customer's mouth.
It's also much less likely to result in an upsell or selling additional merchandise. Why would they want to lose that opportunity?
Leaving a bad taste in a customer's mouth isn't a problem. Just look at the comments here from people exactly like that: they went somewhere else, and then bought the exact same thing. Sure, they're griping about it, but who cares? Apple still got their money for the item, and they freed up room in the Apple Store for another customer who might be more amenable to up-selling.
Why should Apple care about pissing off customers with this kind of treatment? It's not like they're going to buy an Android Phone or Samsung watch or whatever. They're going to buy the Apple product they have their heart set on, no matter how poorly they're treated by employees at the Apple store. So exactly what incentive does Apple have to make their shopping experience more efficient and hassle-free?
It kinda seems the fastest way to get an iphone would be to go to a store where you can actually say "i want to buy an iphone from you immediately" and they respond with "i want to sell an iphone to you immediately" whereupon your money and their iphone are exchanged.
It's sort of shocking to hear about going to a store, attempting to purchase something they are selling at the asking price, and being told "I don't feel like having commerce right now. I have a headache. Why don't you come back tomorrow cause I need something time to psych myself up?" It's almost violating somehow, maybe like seeing capitalism get violated or something. I mean, what if you went to the grocery store and they told you they don't feel like selling food to you at the time but they might have some appointments open. Hunger doesn't have a snooze button to delay it until the time of your appointment.
>It's almost violating somehow, maybe like seeing capitalism get violated or something.
No one's being violated here.
>I mean, what if you went to the grocery store and they told you they don't feel like selling food to you at the time but they might have some appointments open. Hunger doesn't have a snooze button to delay it until the time of your appointment.
You don't go to the grocery store if you're hungry (in fact, that's the worst time to shop for groceries). If you're hungry, go to a restaurant.
Anyway, if there's a fancy and horribly overpriced grocery store in town, and they treat customers like this, and those customers just give in and make appointments and come back later, how is the grocery store operating badly?
Normally, such a grocery store would quickly go under, as customers would go to a competing grocery store. But with Apple, that never happens. Apple customers will keep coming back for more.
Some people (apparently many people) actually like this kind of buying experience. I imagine some ultra-high end brands of clothing and cars treat people similarly.
Do you get how insane this sounds as an experience though? I'm physically in the store, saying "just let me pay for your product so I can leave" and the default is to try and drag that interaction out?
The existence of workarounds doesn't make it not stupid.
Not really. Apple is catering to the majority of consumers who don't arrive at the store with their exact purchase ready to go. They want to be guided and shown all the options.
And if you are in the small % who don't want this. Either go to one of the other retail stores selling the product, or order it online for pickup or delivery.
It doesn't make sense economically, and it is likely a side effect of a metric used on employee performance. Quick sale -> less time in store -> more time to help those that (actually!) need it. If you truly can't be bothered to take the money for an unambiguous transaction, Something Is Broken.
Yeah but the shop itself has a long-standing user interface, ie people go into a shop to buy what they want. Ok Apple are catering to people who might not be certain and amenable to upselling, but not easily catering to people who are fairly clear about what they want, for example long-standing and valuable existing customers, is seriously stupid. It’s not like people are casually wandering into an Apple store looking to purchase a hoover or a Linux netbook.
> the shop itself has a long-standing user interface, ie people go into a shop to buy what they want
Over the last twenty years, more and more shopping is done online. Fewer people want to visit shops - those that do are usualy there to seek advice. The need for shops is changing and will become more like showcases for what you can do with the products and how they might fit into the lifestyle that you aspire to have.
You hit the nail on its head. This is HN where mostly everybody knows tech, geek out about specs and learn about devices ahead of time. But Apple sells to a general population that is far less knowledgeable and mostly lives by "new phone good". Either guidance or upsell Apple knows what they're doing. We are not the usual demographic in an apple store.
But tons and tons of stores cater to customers seeking guidance through their purchases, yet if you show up knowing exactly what you want, they are only all too happy to take the easy sale.
I always excessively research big purchases, and so I have never in my life walked into a store like this without already knowing what I want. For example, walk into a sewing machine shop ready to buy without asking for any demonstrations, and see how almost giddy the staff get about it. Salespeople and shop owners often tell me how much they appreciate the rare customer who comes in ready to buy; it means more sales for less work.
It seems weird to turn those customers away instead of perceiving the sale as an unexpected-but-welcome freebie like 99.9% of other retailers do.
ill gladly bang the drum about how insulated the HN bubble is, but this opinion specifically is bizarre to me. why does this have to be one size fits all? when someone walks in and says "i know i want this, let me buy it" how is it unreasonable to expect Apple to realize that it can skip the default flow?
Maybe they've found that most of the time the customer is mis-informed and doesn't really know what they want. I don't know, but I expect they've got more data than you or I.
I don’t always know for sure what I want when I go into an Apple Store, but I never want to wait 45 mins for an appt! Usually it comes down to 1-2 questions about storage, photo quality, screen tech, etc.
It's probably actually about the opportunity to upsell. A single upsell on a MacBook to the next better specs pays for enough apple store employee time to make up for everything.
Seriously? You think most Apple customers are developers or tech enthusiasts or meticulous shoppers? That's neither the majority of Apple customers nor their intended primary audience.
Your use of dysphemism in that paraphrase suggests a defensiveness and personal identification with your own consumption choices that are not helping you assess Apple's strategy here.
It doesn’t sound insane at all. Unless you’re paying cash, the transaction is going to be set up on a computer, the inventory is going to be checked on a computer, and the payment is going to be processed on a computer. And your smart phone is a computer. Why is it odd to expect it to be faster to ask someone else to do this process for you rather than you doing it yourself? It’s not like you need someone with extensive point-of-sale software experience to blaze through this for you.
>>Why is it odd to expect it to be faster to ask someone else to do this process for you rather than you doing it yourself?
That's not really the issue here. It's more that it's odd to ask someone else to do this process for you and they tell you to make an appointment and come back.
A potential customer is telling an apple store employee "I want to exchange my money for your goods. I need you to do the exact same thing as a high school kid at a part time job, take my money and give me the phone. I just want you to act like a proper brick and mortar store for 2 minutes dammit."
To which the employee responds "I can't do that now be cause you don't have an appointment. When you come back withone, I'll be glad to take the 2 minutes that's needed to make that transaction."
The "insane" pat is that apple store employees, the purpose of which are ultimately to convince potential customers to give them money in exchange for apple stuff and facilitate the transfer of resources, are basically telling potential customers "I won't do my job where I take your money and give you apple stuff unless you have an appointment. You don't have one, no apple for you."
Was coming here to say the same; I don’t think I’ve ever come to the Apple Store to buy something; always order it online through their app or website and choose store pick up. You schedule a time, stop in, verify ID, and are out within a few minutes.
This problem (not Apple's fault) makes me pessimistic about the practicability of this process for people with high myopia. I've never ever been able to walk out of an optometry appointment with a pair of glasses. Could an Apple Store possibly be better than an eye doctor?
I only have normal subpar vision but I too have never been able to walk out of an optometry appointment with a pair of glasses. That's a thing? Optometrists keep prescription lens stock on hand?
There's a store chain called Lenscrafters that has a gimmick where, depending on your prescription, you can get glassess in one hour at some stores. So if you have an appointment for an eye exam at the store it can be done. I've never shopped there so can't say what it's like in practice.
I returned the Pro XDR display and the person at the store didn't ask me anything other than for my receipt and opening the box to check the product was there.
Can't you also buy these products online? I'm not surprised that the in-store experience has become such a high touch affair when the customer base that would have wanted less interaction have already self-selected out by not going to the store at all
I just had this exact experience because my phone was irrevocably ruined, so I needed to pick a replacement up the same day.
The Apple Store was a very poor experience with a sales agent I knew more than trying, repeatedly, to explain to me things like backup, Apple Care, etc., etc. I also for some reason had to talk to four different people, and the only one that could actually help me was busy while everyone else in the store was standing around. It should have taken 10 minutes and it took the better part of an hour.
I wouldn’t assume they’re assuming it, they probably have data to tell them that.
I’ve not gone into a store for an item when I already knew exactly what I want since the pandemic. Even if I need it same day I’ll buy it online and pick it up. That’s probably most people now, and they probably know it.
Yes. The last time I was there to buy an iphone they said: “Someone will help you in 30 minutes, let me put your name in the queue. Oh, and you have to go stand and wait in the corner. No, you cannot leave the store to get coffee, if you do you will lose your place in the queue.”
I counted 14 workers and maybe 3x as many customers in the store, with at least 5 workers just standing around doing nothing.
It’s clever. They’re essentially hacking your attention by taking advantage of the fact that you already signaled you have money and are willing to spend it. Getting you in the store and putting the hardware in front of you is the hardest part, and you did that yourself.
This is why people on a budget go to the grocery store with a list. The physical experience is designed to sell you more, and Apple has the margins to to design the fuck out of that experience.
If you did not enjoy the Apple Store experience you should absolutely not go there again. You are in charge of your time and attention. Only you get to decide how to spend it.
I don’t have the same negative experience as others in this thread with the Apple Store, but I understand it. I would liken it to a car dealership, which I refuse to do business with after it once took five hours to buy a car from one. Lots of people are totally fine with it, but it’s not for me.
Near me, they keep the products locked up in the back room, and the person who you talk to on the floor often doesn't have direct access and needs to find the person who has access to get them the product.
It makes sense. There's not a pile of 1000 Macbooks on a pallet back there. It's locked up in a cage, and they go in and get one at a time.
This may not come as a surprise, but the practice of locking up expensive shit so people can't go grab stuff they aren't supposed to isn't unique to the Apple Store.
I've worked places that used this kind of process. It doesn't turn a 10 minute visit into a 50 minute visit without some kind of underlying issue blocking the cage pull from happening. Something along the lines of an interpersonal communication failure (forgot to request cage pull, person with key forgot/never got the request or the person with the key has gone into hiding ), a technical fluke (cage has electronic lock and it's EMP day), or a freak accident (person with the key, as well as the key itself, got disintegrated by ball lightning). As long as there isn't anything blocking, a cage pull is 10-15 min. If the person with the key was busy with a client, the requestor would normally take that over so they can run to the cage without the delay of having to finish that client.
Costco manages to do this well. If you buy a Mac (or almost any other high-value small item) you take a paper slip which is scanned by the cashier or self checkout. You then go to the cage and they hand you your item right then and there.
Gemstones are also not worth anywhere near what the gem store would like you to think. Just try selling them back to the store you bought them from and see how much less they are willing to give you.
I usually place an order online and pickup at the store for reasons. Never had it take more than a few minutes. I did check out the Apple Watch Ultra in a store to make sure I was OK with the size and the band but again very straightforward.
You can frequently get same-day delivery for a nominal fee, even within a few hours! My partner’s phone broke after she dropped it one too many times at about 7:30am on a recent morning, and we had a new one in hand without leaving the house by 10:30am.
Yes, and then too sometimes you order for same-day delivery and the store hands the bag to an Uber Eats driver (they actually do partner with Uber Eats for courier service!) who mysteriously never turns up to hand it off to you. Then you have to spend a few hours on the phone with Apple to make sure you don't end up paying for a phone you never got.
I don't blame the guy who stole it, although I might if I'd had to hold the bill for his act of sticky-fingered entrepreneurship. I do blame Apple for using a service, whose drivers normally handle $50 in food at a time, to deliver nonperishable and highly portable items of 20 or more times that value.
Just order it then go and pick it up in store. High touch customer service is universally considered a good thing, but for someone like you, you can order it online or just pick it up in store.
Except when you don't want the high-touch service. Good service companies recognize this and have some accommodation for the customer who knows what they want and are there to buy, not shop.
If I'm there to shop, I'll ask them to point me to what I want to try out and do so. If I'm buying clothes, for example, high-touch is great. "I like this style, but this manufacturer doesn't fit me well, do you have something similar you recommend?"
But when I needed a new Apple Watch charger on a trip, I walked into the store, said I needed one, and the only question was did I want USB-A or USB-C? A, thanks, sold. I was in and out in less time than it took my wife to find and use the restroom in the mall.
One bizarre experience I had was when I had a Genius Bar appointment to fix an inaudible handset speaker on an iPhone (apparently they have a program that runs through a wide gamut of frequencies to knock out any odd bits of dust). Yep, it worked. Then the Genius asked me if I would make a phone call (can't, it's a backup phone, no SIM) or FaceTime call (um, to whom?) to test it. It's work hours, the people I would call would be busy at work, how about I just call your phone? No, can't share that.
I said, Genius, why don't you have a generic thing that I can FaceTime and you can respond to that's part of your work identity? I don't need your personal info. Just "applestore-ZIPcode-[five-digit one-time account]@icloud.com" would work.
I'm not sure I agree with "universally", I bet there are a awful lot of people who can't stand that level of service and find it quite uncomfortable. I get that I could order ahead etc, but that makes an impulse purchase into a multi-step process. I'm sure the multi-trillion dollar company felt that pain when I still bought their product only from a different place. Oh wait... ;-)
A few years back I bought a MBP online with the pickup option. I picked it up, declined their assistance setting it up and went about my day.
I get home later that day, start to set it up and it’s locked to employees of a bank in Canada. Live support is no help so I take it back, only to find out the serial number did not match that on the box. They had their security guard quietly come stand near me until they figured out what they wanted to do.
The sales guy told me since they can’t prove I stole it they were giving me a different one. I think they knew it was previously returned and realized they got scammed by someone else the first time around.
This time I made sure I could login before I left.
Within the return window the new 16” came out at the same price so I took it in and swapped it for the 16”. They just took it, handed me the new laptop, transferred Apple Care and sent me on my way. It made sense as they didn’t bother to verify the box/device serial number with me. They took my word and processed everything in a matter of minutes.
That corporate lock thing is called DEP, device enrollment program. It used to be easy to bypass (just don't connect to internet during setup) but then it would bug you constantly once you did. On T2/M1/M2 macs it's no longer bypassable similar to the apple account lock anti theft feature (which is a different thing)
Apple can remove it of course. It was probably a laptop stolen from the bank or their suppliers, then returned to Apple to whitewash it.
I'm not surprised this happens. What I am surprised about is that Apple apparently sells a returned item to another customer as new. Pretty sure that's not their policy and in most cases illegal. Perhaps they checked the seals (for activating DEP you don't need to open the box at all!) but still this shouldn't happen.
Normally these items go through a cleaning and reimaging process and then end up on the refurb store at a reduced price.
Did they not scan both??? Many big box retail stores have to scan both the box and the barcode of the item through it (i.e. a Playstation) before the transaction can be completed. Yikes.
Apple stores used to feel kind of special in the early ipod/iphone era, almost like the employees were excited about the technology products they were selling. But the population of friendly and smart techy employees willing to work for retail wages in most American cities had to have always been tiny and with Apple’s growth it was exhausted long ago and employee quality has diluted at the same time as traffic has increased.
When I last went to an Apple Store to get a new one (while wearing my current Apple Watch) I just said “I know what I want and what I’m doing”.
They handed me the box on the spot in the middle of the store and I paid with the mobile PoS terminal they carry.
I was in and out in less than five minutes and this was at their very busy Chicago Michigan Avenue store. Maybe they’re that efficient because it is busy but like most Apple Store experiences I’ve had it was very fast and efficient - they didn’t get in the way of me spending my money, that’s for sure.
This is closer to my experience around late 2019. (Toronto Ontario Canada, at the time.)
Went in, saw someone on staff fixing up a display unit, asked if I could buy an S5 apple watch, he asked if I had any questions, I said none, tapped card on the mobile POS thing, and then in maybe 10 minutes, someone else came out, apologized for the wait, and handed me my box.
It's possible it's changed over covid though. Makes sense they would want the in-store experience to be more white-glove if they were seeing less foot traffic.
Lack of foot traffic was their choice. Apple stores were far more picky about COVID than the local norm. You had to show an appointment or a "ready for pickup" email to be allowed into the store. And that was early 2021, when I was fully vaccinated (and had the card to prove it).
I’ve bought a few items in store. An iPad. Went in told them what I wanted. They went got it. Came out and asked if I want to know anything else about it or need help. Said no. Asked if I wanted apple care. I said yes. They added it to the cart. Gave me a 30s overview of what I can do with apple care. Paid. Left.
If you let the people in the store talk they will talk and try upset. Just politely say no.
> if I didn't have an appointment, it would take half an hour or so to get somebody over.
It probably goes a long way to explain things if you know that Watch launched while Ahrendts was SVP of Retail at Apple. She came from Burberry, a luxury fashion retailer, and clearly had a vision for Apple Stores that was not compatible with the high throughput & demand they regularly get.
"I've tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there's very little one can do. I never go in there now myself. If ever I am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and shy away."
"That one?" said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.
"Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do."
The sign said:
Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.
"It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane."
— Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All The Fish, Pan Books (1984)
This is what the average person likes about Apple. This is why the company is worth so much money. The facade of exclusivity and perfection. Clean, white rooms with clean, smiling staff and shiny, perfect products.
They're just phones, they're just laptops. But no, we get "what's a computer?" hurr durr.
The giant reason to do this with the headset in particular is that getting it wrong means a literally painful and/or nauseous experience. Meta is willing to let that happen with its $300 headsets mostly bought as gifts for children, but the bar is a lot higher for a $3500 device and Apple is already acutely aware of the blowback from "you're holding it wrong"-type scenarios.
I think this is a valid reason, and hopefully the driving factor.
On the other hand, Apple certainly seems to bank on making their devices as exclusive an experience as possible. They sell a huge amount, but they want the customer to feel like they are part of an elite group. This will heighten the artificial sense of scarcity.
> Apple is already acutely aware of the blowback from "you're holding it wrong"-type scenarios.
And the funny thing about what the legions of Apple faithful who were willing to pretzel themselves into contortions defending that.
(For a more reason, mention Batterygate and watch them come out and tell you how you just don't understand, Apple was absolutely doing you a favor, somehow.)
(Just like when they quoted me $900 to fix faulty charging on a MacBook, device worked perfectly, battery was healthy, just could not be charged. "Perhaps we should talk about getting you into a new Mac instead...?")
This sounds to me like the issue of when technical people call Tech Support with an advanced problem and the agent forces them to first check their monitor is on and reset.
It's frustrating, sure, but look at if from the other side: 99% of the people they deal with are completely incapable, and 90% of their problems ARE solved by a simple reboot.
Apple/iPhone is the ubiquitous phone for everyone from CTOs to grandma's.
The in store experience is optimized to make sure a person that has been stuck in a cave for 30 years and can walk out with a device optimized for their needs.
I bet they think that people like you will just buy online and choose in store pickup...
I normally order online for collection and have never had an issue there - most I've waited for collection is about 5 minutes during peak times when the store was absolutely rammed with people (Oxford Street, London, a Friday lunchtime.)
But I did once visit a store with someone wanting to buy a Watch and there was no forced sitting through any fitting or explanations. Just some questions about which Watch, if they already had a phone to connect it to, etc., and we were in and out of the store in under 20 minutes (Covent Garden, London, a Saturday afternoon, which is reasonably but not terrifyingly busy.)
I too find the it patronizing to shop in-store – it seems the staff are trained to assume everyone has less knowledge of the products than they do – this might work in other consumer retail environments but not when you're selling "Pro" level products. The tone and efficiency of the retail experience is much better at a store like Adorama or B&H (NYC pro photo/video shops). Not to mention the irritating processes and many touchpoints of reaching the right person in an Apple store
99% of their target audience does not live in Silicon Valley.
Go to LA for example and you'll find creative professionals that need "pro" level gear but appreciate the white-glove Apple service of showing them around and answering questions for a high end purchase.
Slight tangent to your tangent, but, after a poor experience last week, I'm really disappointed in how Apple handles specifically support in their stores.
Historically, I've been able to just throw in a few little bits of "yup, I know how that works" so that their techs realize that I know what I'm talking about and let up with the patronizing assumptions about what I do and don't know. However, this time, when dealing with a newly-present heat issue during charging after that very store replaced the battery in the phone (so both a safety issue and one that would be warranty if it could be determined that it was caused by the repair), the tech just kept repeating that there was no way that their work could've caused it and going "these phones don't have a fan to cool them like our laptops". No matter what I said, I couldn't get them to have an actual discussion with me, so now I'm stuck waiting for a call from their safety support team since it's a heat issue.
Hopefully I can get somewhere with the phone support people, but it's really disappointing that they don't train their techs in the stores to feel out what a customer knows or at least drop some of the "oh the user doesn't know anything" if customers are showing that they do, in fact, know things.
A few years ago I ended up having 4 visits to get my MBP fixed. They replaced the SSD 3 times (this was the last model before soldered disks). It was still having IO problems (file system corruption) even after fresh OS installs. It would only happen under heavy load. After the 3rd time, I got a decent genius - I asked him what the likelihood of having 3 bad SSDs in a row was, and maybe they should replace the logic board? He said “have you seen the new iPhone? Just go over there and have a look at it while I run a test” - I came back “I’ve reproduced the problem wink”. He knew the checklists needed appeasing, and cheated to get the desired outcome. Still, shouldn’t have taken that many visits.
Then I had a problem with the keyboard replacement program. They agreed to replace it under their extended warranty, due to the known issues with them. Posted the laptop off. Got an email 2 days later with a blurred image “the logic board shows signs of water damage”. I had a choice. Replace the logic board at my own cost (>£1000), or return the device unrepaired. They were the ones that had previously opened the machine & replaced the logic board! The machine operated permanently in clamshell mode, vertically - there’s simply no way any moisture could have got into it. I just wanted the keyboard replacing. Very frustrating. I ended up buying the parts & doing the repair myself.
> Hopefully I can get somewhere with the phone support people, but it's really disappointing that they don't train their techs in the stores to feel out what a customer knows or at least drop some of the "oh the user doesn't know anything" if customers are showing that they do, in fact, know things.
I think they have homogenized support to treat each user as equally non-technical, it's by design. Apple is like a sect, they need to have a strong grip on their users.
I was able to talk highly technical stuff to their Mac support engineers at least. Even found a bypass in their diagnosis machine’s data protection scheme and told them about it lol, their was a few months ago.
I worked Apple Retail many many moons ago. The senior manager once told me (manager -> senior manager -> store leader)
“Your job is not to sell products, we could put all this inventory out there on a pallet with a credit card swiper and sell all of them. Your job is to sell attachments, primarily Apple Care”.
Seriously, sales volume was a footnote. You are entirely judged on your attach rate for whatever it is corporate/your market is pushing, they start you part time and the only way up is to attach attach attach. No one wants to “just sell you a phone” because they know you’ll never get Apple Care and for every one of you they need to sell 4 other people on AC to get their numbers back up.
Another fun note: At the time Apple Store revenue $/sq ft beat out jewelry stores.
Great gig as a high school kid, made decent cash and a bunch of people used their tuition assistance. A large number of their employees though are what I call “retail lifers”, 25-30 year olds who are way in debt from a degree that didn’t work out or washed out of the corporate world and landed back in retail. They really don’t like younger employees who are actually going somewhere/realize it’s a temporary gig for kids and not a real career. Lots of alcoholism and drug abuse in that group.
If that's still the case, I can imagine why they'd want a customer who knows exactly what they want to walk to the store next door to get the item elsewhere.
A customer who already knows exactly what configuration they want is probably going to be hard to sell AppleCare to.
The Genius Bar also takes forever to get appointments at now compared to how it was. I think they maintained close to the same number of retail locations as their customer base exploded, which probably works out better economically but is far less convenient.
Try buying a Mac in 1992. First you have to find a reseller. Then, they may think you're not seriously looking and ignore you. Some resellers are only by appointment. If you do look like you have money, they pick an option for you (Classic, LC, IIsi, IIci) and try to keep you in your lane. They upsell you a little on software and things like Kensington locks. Then you get to order it and it arrives a couple months later.
A couple years ago I wanted an item in-stock at the Apple store but the soonest 'pickup appointment' they could give me was a few days out. What's worse is they have you choose a specific 15-minute window. That's not very customer friendly.
They seem to inject additional people into their processes, for reasons I can't discern but I'm sure exist.
For example, even buying something as simple as an Airtag means waiting for a random employee to be free, who then gets one for you, only to then wait for another different employee to be free to allow you to pay for it. Maybe that's just about theft prevention?
My one "Genius Bar" experience (recently) in Munich was really crappy - told to check in, then told to wait by a table where I was ignored; when I re-approached someone, told to wait somewhere else... and watching the flow of things, it became very apparent that my 'appointment' had no value - I was helped in a queue after people who'd just walked in.
Most non computer purchases like AirTags can be self serve. You grab a box off the shelf, scan it with the app, Apple Pay and walk out. No person necessary. Works on everything without a unique serial.
Even when the product you want is out on a shelf, it’s annoying that there’s no line to get in to pay for it. If you need help, you just have to chase someone down. The whole experience feels chaotic and contrarian.
I recently had exactly the opposite experience - I went into an Apple Store (in the UK) wanting to buy a pencil and case for an iPad mini. The whole experience took less than 10 minutes, including trying out multiple case suggestions based on my preferences.
I guess though that this does apply to accessories rather than one of their main product lineups though - although I have heard similar things from friends purchasing products at the same store. Perhaps it heavily depends on which store you go to?
I don't have an Apple Store in my country, but last time I bought Watch in Tokyo and an iPhone in NYC, I told them I know exactly what I want and the transaction was super quick.
In NYC I was even impressed by it, because I just talked to the sales rep for the tiniest bit and a colleague came over and inconspicuously handed her a box with the phone mid-walk. I haven't noticed how she (the sales rep) signaled for it. It almost felt like buying drugs.
Just order the item you want for store pickup before you leave and it’s usually ready by the time you get there. That’s my experience and it’s quite literally in-n-out.
My last experience at a busy Apple Store was walking in, finding the iPod home I wanted to buy, scanning the UPC and serial code with my Apple Store app on my phone and clicking purchase then walking out without hassle or having to talk to a single person.
This wont happen if you want to buy a phone or MacBook, but with accessories and things you can self-checkout, it’s pretty seamless.
I’ll be honest, I’m one of the people that needs instructions for Apple products. I’ve been buying them online — each time becoming frustrated with the lack of instructions and the assumed knowledge necessary to use them.
Oh, you didn’t know that there’s actually two different places to swipe down at the top of the phone? Everyone knows about that, you idiot!
For the iPhone at least there is a fairly extensive user guide online. It doesn't help much for technical issues but did a decent job explaining how to do things.
In my case, I learned about setting up a triple-click shortcut to pop up the accessibility menu so I could unmute the phone via software due to a broken side switch that won't stay on. I'm sure this is available elsewhere online, but using Google just took me to the regular places - typically someone posting on an Apple forum trying and failing to get help.
I don't buy Apple stuff so don't know anything about Apple stores -- but I've encountered it in other stores (usually ones that fancy themselves "high end" in some way).
It drive me crazy. It's bad enough to have to talk to a salesman when I wasn't seeking one, it's even worse when I tell that salesperson that I'm ready to buy something specific and then they waste both of our time trying to do anything other than take my money and give me the thing.
Those are stores I'm unlikely to return to.
This is different than when I want a salesperson to explain things to me. In that case, yes, please shower me with attention as long as they're one of the ones that are actually helpful rather than just constantly trying to sell.
My watch buying experience was really straightforward. I knew which watch I wanted, and which band - really the only thing I needed to be sure of was the band size (as I’d not worn one before). I’d say the whole thing took about 10 minutes.
This is anecdotal of course. Your experience is yours. Sorry you went through that. My experiences have all been pretty smooth.
As for the Vision Pro, I think we’re dealing with a very different kind of product. They want everyone to have a positive experience, and this is the kind of thing no one has used even if you’ve used VR headsets, you’ve not used the product they created. They want to make sure you’re not getting stuck on fit or comfort.
Are these U.S. Apple stores? I’ve had a dozen or so purchases over the last few years at several Apple stores in the Bay Area and Los Angeles area and have never experienced anything remotely like this. Sometimes I’ve bought online and done in store pickup, other times I’ve just asked the employee for the exact item I wanted, and I’ve never experienced the slightest roadblock to an extremely fast checkout process. I would be surprised if this isn’t a very deliberately planned in-store experience, so I gotta wonder if it’s a regional thing or something.
Not been my experience when I’ve bought apple watches. Product walk through were always optional that store employees were happy to offer, I always skipped them, brought the watch and was on my way.
While my dad shopped for one for my sister I had time to drink a coffee, find a Mother’s Day gift of chocolates, and do some work (the Apple Store outside Apple Park has all this).
I've been to my local Apple Store once, and it was a great experience. I was there to trade-in two M1 Macbook Air's. No associate was available however I got one after 5 minutes and they very quickly completed the trade-ins without any questions whatsoever, and wished me a great day. No attempt to sell/upsell me a product (I told them at the beginning I was going to purchase online) and they were very friendly.
I recently went in to do an exchange of a band I bought bundled with a watch and had to help the person helping me because their system didn’t understand it was a bundle and therefore had to be rung up differently. Same deal with them treating me like an 80 year old (I’m mid-20s). It’s almost like they need to be trained to recognize a person who doesn’t need a ton of support in their purchase. I would do better with self-checkout honestly.
I find the store purchasing experience to be frustrating as well, but if you order online and it's in stock, every Apple store I've lived near will deliver it to you door in 2-4 hours.
If you want to play with a product: go to the store, interact with it, and if you like it order it on your phone while you're there. It will be home not long after you are.
Being forced into an appointment when you're ready to pay and know exactly what you want doesn't sound like a run-of-the-mill shopping chore.
It oddly resembles a visit to a medical clinic (that is government subsidized, and accordingly fettered with bureaucratic rules that prevent you from just ordering the procedure you want).
Right lol this is also my experience. Do you need help setting it up? No thank you. Bye! I've never felt patronized at the Apple store, honestly it's the one electronics store where I feel like the staff kind of know what they're doing and are hovering around tentatively ready to help me actually purchase the thing.
Absolutely bizarre. My experience in Toronto buying an Apple Watch on an extremely busy day was 5-10min in and out and there was no attempt to ‘fit’ me.
Told them what they wanted, they went back and got it, they brought a POS so I could pay, I was easily out of there in 10min.
Never had any issues like this whatsoever in more than a decade of shopping at these stores?
Buying online with in-store pickup is the best way to go these days. You can take your time evaluating which options you want int the comfort of your own home, and then be in and out of the store pretty quickly without worrying about delivery.
That's what I did when I got my last phone, and will do that on every subsequent purchase.
You can use the online Apple Store then either have it delivered or pickup in person.
Or purchase from the hundreds of third party resellers who also sell them.
There are many people especially with the Apple Watch who aren't experts at technology and so having personalised service makes sense for them. And for you there are obviously many other options.
I keep reading stories about experiences like yours, but no, never experienced that myself.
But then, it might be about my buying habits: the cheapest thing which suits my needs, and only when I actually need it rather than as soon as it comes out, so I'm almost never there at the sales peak for whatever it is I'm getting.
> but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation
I have purchased several Apple Watches, iPhones, and other devices and not once have I ever been forced to sit through anything other than an employee going to the back to get what I purchased.
It seems they made the experience for the people they show in their commercials (some "tech unconcerned happy people" who knows just barely enough to pick the Apple product, has "good vibes mandolin music" all over them and somehow makes 300k/yr)
This has not been my experience at all. I walk in (or make an appt beforehand for the sake of convenience), tell the what I want, plop down my credit card, and I am out of there in 20 minutes tops. Super smooth, professional experience.
Apple brings my snark out. After I went through all the BS to buy the base airpod for my kid, from the store, I then requested a printed receipt rather than give them my email addr.
Apparently the apple store near my house rarely gives people paper receipts anymore. It took 10+ mins for the poor sales drone to try every table in the store before he found the one that could actually still print receipts.
So I got to be the smart ass who said on the way out "goodness printing a receipt isn't that complex, i thought apple was a technology company."
Buy it online via the app and designate the store as a pick-up. You will barely have to speak with anyone. Stores are busy, that’s just how it is. I’ve bought all the products you mentioned and didn’t have to deal with any “help” or delay.
Every time I went to am Apple Store, I came in, said what I wanted, they brought it to me, I paid and then I left. 5min max, and as recently as a month ago. I'll guess you've been unlucky or your particular store is bad?
Generally, I buy the phones online and schedule pick up at the store. I go to the store for my appointment and ask the staff to apply the screen protector. It is a completely smooth and consistent experience.
It would be interesting if they tried to further emulate the famous behavior of luxury brands like Rolex, which may not deign to sell you anything if you just ask. Just recreate that aura for the mass consumer.
It sounds like Apple is deeply upset that companies like Ferrari get to invite people to buy their products while theirs are just mass-produced, made in China consumables that anyone can buy.
I've felt the opposite. The last two purchases I walked in and bought exactly what I wanted on impulse because it was so easy. An iphone upgrade and a battery thereafter.
Apple looks like a tech company, but it's really a luxury goods company. When you consider it through this lens the magic falls away and it's just selling status.
Everything I went to buy something. I told them I want to get X so they sat me down for a few minutes then I checked out for everything without explanation of the product.
Sounds like you want a self-checkout aisle for Apple Store products but its really just "IT Pro Line" or something, someone just charges you for what you want.
I personally have had the experience of having to talk to two people (with a third person required to fetch the product from the back room) at an Apple store in Toronto. You stand there waiting on the side for 10 minutes while the gopher finishes with a couple of other customers.
Referring to Apple Store employees as 'gophers' seems unnecessarily disparaging. I think I had to wait for a bit too, but I don't buy phones that often, so I didn't think much of it.
two months ago i walked in with a macbook pro spec i wanted, they confirmed they had one in stock. We did the payment dance and i walked out. Total time in store ~5m.
The Apple store experience is meant to be initializing. It's the mindset that they want their users to be in, otherwise you're not a typical Apple user.
If you know just what you want you could a) buy online or b) buy it from any other retailer. The Apple Store is for people who want to speak to apple staff
Same for me, I honestly think people are just trying to find things to complain about. I've shopped in the Apple store many times and it's been quick and easy, no hassling by the employees.
maybe the goal isnt only to sell product but also to make the customer think apple is smart and the customer needs them indefinitely to navigate the smartphone world. I wonder how their morning genius briefings go and what their plan is when a customer approaches
> it would take half an hour or so to get somebody over
That's only the case for genius bar appointments or an extended consultation when they're super busy or something. If you just want to buy a phone you've already decided on, you ask the nearest person and they grab it and you pay for it.
It sounds like there was maybe just a miscommunication in your case. There is no trend here.
I've known multiple people, and attended with one, who walked in, picked up the watch, and left in a few minutes total. That's also how I bought a laptop once (the rest online).
Apple stores are often willing to spend enormous amounts of time with you if you ask for help, but I've never seen them stay in your way when you say "no" and that you're ready to pay and leave.
(Obviously it can happen, but they're some of the most-standardized tech stores out there. If it were A Thing™, it would be everywhere.)
Some people have trouble rejecting help and feel awkward doing so. Of course, it is a totally normal thing to do, to reject help, and people should practice it!
Yep. There's often people there whose job is to sell without an appointment. At my local stores they normally stand next to the accessories, where you can just grab stuff from the shelf.
But you can ask them to grab a specific model of iPhone, iMac, etc, for you if you don't need information.
Nice idea, but at some point GPT + "generate code to implement this patent", may develop plausible enough code to satisfy most Patent Examiners. I don't see this fixing the issue in the longer term - maybe a "use it or lost it" rule + much shorter enforcement period for software patents is what is needed?
I'm all for improvements to pod startup times etc, but the general idea of putting more software into cars is not that appealing. I recently broke down in the highlands of Scotland in a fairly new car with the family - it was a horrible experience. It was made worse by the fact that there was nobody close that had a clue what to do with the car. The breakdown service arrived promptly, plugged the diagnostic tool into the car, proclaimed it broken, called a tow truck and left - two days later we arrived home. Had I been in a less complex car, a local garage could most likely have fixed the problem and sent us on our way. The sophistication and gadgets in modern cars are great until something goes wrong then they fail hard. Small local garages that used to be a life saver are next to useless now as they don't have the tools and knowledge to fix a mobile data centre.
More software is fine IMO. More software on critical path ain't.
Have the ECU only do the engine thing. Have the AC control just do AC control. Decouple dependencies and make it as simple as possible. Old cars already do it. Blinker switch send signal directly to light controller, not to some central box deciding what it should do with it.
If something needs config in addition to control signals, have it keep it own config and only be updated from the "config manager" (inforatinment box). If infotainment box dies, everything else still works.
Cars already are basically "microservices on a message bus". Let's just use what works with that - minimal coupling and maximum independence of "services"
> Had I been in a less complex car, a local garage could most likely have fixed the problem and sent us on our way. The sophistication and gadgets in modern cars are great until something goes wrong then they fail hard. Small local garages that used to be a life saver are next to useless now as they don't have the tools and knowledge to fix a mobile data centre.
According to the car, the stability control system wasn't working. Cause? Obviously a broken fuel injector. The stability control system talks to the engine ECU to control the torque if there is a lack of traction - it is notified of this by the ABS computer. Broken Injector=No ability to manage torque, hence traction control warning. Sitting here now, that makes perfect sense. In horizontal Scottish rain - less so!
Unless I’m missing something, it seems that this information largely invalidates the thesis of your previous post. A critical component (fuel injector) failed, the software in the car prevented it from running and causing catastrophic damage. Roadside assistance came, immediately determined it can’t be fixed on the side of the road and towed the car. Seems like a best-case scenario given the circumstances other than possibly the red herring related to the stability control.
Assuming that the fuel injector wasn't stuck open, the car could simply disable the affected cylinder and continue to run (poorly) in limp mode. I had exactly this happen in a 20 year old VW and it turned out that the injector was fine and the connector had just come loose. The engine sounded awful running on 3 cylinders and wouldn't go past 3000 rpm but there was no permanent damage. The fault code in the ECU correctly identified the problem (fuel injector cylinder X open circuit) though it did also log misfires and disable traction control.
Sure, old carbie with distributor might've just ran with 3 cylinders , but that also might damage something.
Also auto makers don't really want to give user sensible error messages or even just metrics because without experience they might just misinterpret it as different problem.
For example if car have oil pressure gauge it is either nearly fake or heavily filtered. Oil pressure changes according to load but gauge going up and down might cause user to think something is wrong with car...
Not all cars are made equal. Just as you don't go to a cross-Sahara race in a car you don't know you, you don't buy a Prius to go logging in Alberta or Yakutsk.
Sure, that doesn't necessarily invalidate your argument, after all this increase in car complexity (through "electronization" and smartification of more and more components) without the increase in debuggability/repairability is IMHO a bad trade-off for many consumers.
Case in point, our second-hand 2011 Ford Focus has a problem with the electronic steering assist. Apparently it somehow experiences some kind of over-voltage and the internal system shuts down. It's likely due to humidity. (So probably it's simply a design/manufacturing/QA issue.) Okay, but there's no way to get the actual data from the integrated electronics from the steering system, but it's possible to reflash a different firmware on it. Which resets the internal data. Which basically clears this error state, and the car will happily use it.
But there's clearly a mechanical error, there's a new "bad" noise when turning the steering wheel. But it's a 10+ year car, rarely used, and replacing the steering system is about ~1000 EUR, doing the firmware flashing was ~30 EUR. (Finding the guy with the laptop, who can flash the firmware through the good old ODB port was the challenge.)
And it's basically a big (market) information asymmetry problem. The car industry wants to sell more cars. Sure they sell some parts, but the more repairability a car has the less parts it really needs, as consumers can make their own tradeoffs.
A bad fuel injector should usually be a reason to stop driving. Depending on the type of damage it would likely damage the piston and/or cylinder fairly quickly if you attempted to keep running it.
That would obviously depend on the failure mode. But there certainly are failure modes which could be quite damaging, and an ECU may have limited ability to determine what failure mode is occurring, and even if it has sensors that can indicate certain failure modes, it is not always clear if those can be trusted, as they there be additional failure modes that make sensors give misleading results.
Cars have a “limp-home” mode which they enter if sensors show odd yet not critical errors. Usually it restricts the acceleration and top speed to 30kmph or so. If it totally shut down it was likely a very serious error.
That sounds horribly familiar! (Old, relatively non-fancy, Ford Focus; it limped along with the failure.) The explanation makes sense, which it didn't at the time, and the traction control button didn't help. The specialist garage initially said "sensor failure", as I assumed, having lost my OBD device.
Agree. I am not buying any car not running all software components as Spring Boot micro services in kubernetes cluster as a standard cloud native service.
If this setup can run my 95% uptime enterprise apps, I am sure as hell it can run my car too.
and a few years later, we get Injecternetes … though I'm not sure if that will be the name of an improved fork… or the name of a security vuln exploit.
If you're a k8s fan but don't consider it reliable enough to do anything even next to but independent from safety critical systems then that's not exactly a glowing recommendation.
Different tech has different needs. I can see it being really great with server side distributed systems. I don’t really see it having any benefit for running stuff in resource constrained single purpose environments
I keep having to stop myself from implementing an incomplete, bug ridden reimplementation if half of Erlang on top of NodeJS so I see the attraction there.
Worker threads have a garbage API and I keep finding myself wanting to have n processes sharing m workers and there’s just no easy way.
A lot of software is created on powerful developer machines. But fill up a normal consumer machine with this software, and you start to notice that it maybe isn't so fine.
This is how things like Electron come to exist. I'm sure Electron works fine on developer machines, but once it trickles down to someone's cheap Celeron netbook, it runs worse than retro computers with 384KB of RAM.
Does it really have to be this way? Is more software "fine", if the same could be accomplished with much less code bloat?
P.S. As far as I've heard, one of the best ways for developers to combat this is to target your software for cheap netbooks proactively; test compiled artifacts there rather than on your powerful development machine. If you can make it fast in that situation, it'll be fast pretty much anywhere.
I once met someone who had optimized their DOOM clone using this method, and they claim to get millions of FPS on any vaguely modern machine, just through optimizing it for cheap netbooks.
> More software is fine IMO. More software on critical path ain't.
Based on the story in the parent, it sounds like this was precisely a problem with software on the critical path, otherwise local mecs/breakdown service would have been able to fix it rather than give up.
economically, this doesn't work. The cheaper cars will always be those that roll all functions into a single cost center. This is why cars wind up with a horribly awful touch screen in the center for controlling almost everything about the car's function.
> The sophistication and gadgets in modern cars are great until something goes wrong
I'd go further than cars and say, "in most things". Smart-anything, washing machines, printers, sewing machines, thermostats, appliances in general...
My mother in-law has two sewing machines. One of them is one of the first electronic sewing machines (from the 70s) and one is much older. Guess which one still works like a charm?
I'm not arguing against electronics, here-- many of these things are no doubt improved by electronics to such a degree that the tradeoff is worth it, but it's good to at least acknowledge that there is a tradeoff. It's also good to try to minimize the impact of electronic failure. Smart things would ideally just revert back to being functional dumb things (rather than bricks) if their electronics fail.
If something like that needs to be smart the smart part should basically be extra interface. Old printers did it right - separate extra box for all the connectivity working as print server. That breaks ? just connect it directly.
But hey, feeding everything from single microcontroller is $2 cheaper...
I went to a "tech school" to learn computers while in High School in the 90's. The tech school also had classes for 'the trades', it was set up to prepare Michigan kids for careers (Careerline Tech IIRC).
Anyway. A big part of that class was learning to clean, repair, and manage printers. Again, it was the 90's, and we were high school kids. We came out quite capable with many computer skills but the printer stuff really stuck with me. I've done technical support throughout the years and have setup hundreds of printers.
The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's. Pure simplicity and speed vs FULL COMPUTERS, with scanning, faxing, and every other imaginable feature crammed in with zero hope of doing anything other than replacing the toner.
> The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's. Pure simplicity and speed vs FULL COMPUTERS, with scanning, faxing, and every other imaginable feature crammed in with zero hope of doing anything other than replacing the toner.
The first Laserwriter in 1985 had more processing power than the Macintosh it was sold to accompany.
Printers have been full computers for a long time now. As we expect them to do more and more, the computers in them get more and more complex.
Who does? Who asked for updates blocking third-party ink, 1GB "drivers", full-color "test prints" each time you switch it on, ...?
Printing reliably doesn't sound too demanding, manufacturers reached that point long ago, and since then I haven't seen all that much groundbreaking innovation. Sure, things like wifi were added but that doesn't require cutting-edge technology - consumer devices could handle that 20 years ago, and more reliably than the printers I've used. I also haven't heard of anyone being excited about NFC in printers, and from experience I can say it's not nearly intuitive or frictionless enough to warrant the integration.
The majority of my printing happens from my smartphone, so my printer needs to be on wifi, and needs to be able to reliably print from Android and iOS.
Accordingly, it needs firmware updates because phones break how they work all the time.
> things like wifi were added but that doesn't require cutting-edge technology - consumer devices could handle that 20 years ago
Not just wifi, multiple protocol for connecting to printers. Also that wifi needs to be 5ghz so I don't have to switch over to a 2.4ghz legacy network every time I want to print (which I had to do with my previous 2.4ghz only wifi printer!)
The onboard touch screen + embedded OS means I don't need to set anything up through a computer or smartphone app.
FWIW I have a black and white laser printer from Brother, I've never had to install a driver, I just plugged it in, typed my wifi PW on to the touch screen, and after a firmware update on first use it has happily been allowing anyone connected to my wifi to print w/o any hassle.
> The majority of my printing happens from my smartphone, so my printer needs to be on wifi
It needs to be on your home network, but it doesn't need to be connected to wifi per se. Ethernet works fine, including ethernet to a wireless mesh AP.
My house came wired for cat5 (the original cat5!) but modern wifi is a lot faster than 100mbps, so I just use wifi for everything.
Latency is higher, but so is the speed.
Also I only own 1 desktop that has an ethernet port, and I haven't plugged the desktop in for 2 years.
I would actually like to have the TV hooked up to ethernet, since its wifi chip crashes every few days and I have to power cycle wifi in settings, but whoever wired the house for cat5 didn't install ports anywhere, although they did install a large patch panel in the basement, but I have better things to do than crimp a bunch of wires to fix one flaky connection.
That's the nifty thing about my second point, with a mesh network - if you put your mesh APs in spots where you have a bunch of wired-capable devices, you can plug everything into the mesh AP and then all the data runs over the mesh AP's high-end radios.
I fixed this by adding a printer server to my NAS and use that for AirPrint and the like. Smart power socket to prevent the printer from drawing power all the time. No need to have a smart printer.
Most people don't have, or want to maintain, a NAS + print server, having the print server software built into the printer is perfectly reasonable for a consumer product!
In my experience everyone that has an old trusted printer that they don’t want to get rid of do have enough hardware running for a server and using it like that. Obviously it’s not for everyone.
People used to buy HP Laserjet 4 printers at auction because they were peak stability. From the look of things the 4 introduced the direct predecessor to the wire protocol printers use today (PCL 5e vs PCL 6 variants)
There were a ton of companies selling refurbished or knockoff toner cartridges for those things too. As good as the LJ was, the fact that they had easy access to cheaper supplies just accelerated the process of selection.
> The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's.
Maybe. But how expensive were they?
I can buy a good laser printer for under $200 these days. It will be more compact, lighter, mechanically simpler and use way less power than older printers. Something has to give.
Some older printers were really overengineered (which in many cases did make them more reliable), but that has a cost. Turns out, consumers didn't want to pay those costs.
My grandma had an original "Montgomery Wards" microwave.. they saved up for months to buy it when it came out. Complete with a rotary dial timer.
Never serviced, always cooked perfectly. She had to get rid of it around 2006 or so, when she got a pacemaker.. They didn't shield them as well back then...
> My mother in-law has two sewing machines. One of them is one of the first electronic sewing machines (from the 70s) and one is much older. Guess which one still works like a charm?
There's a bit of survivorship bias and N=1 here.
I'm old enough to remember machines full of relays and discrete components that failed pretty often and required a lot of troubleshooting with schematics on hand. Modern appliances – if built out of decent components – have a much better shot at surviving long term. Less discrete components that can fail, more debugging capabilities, logic that's implemented in a rock solid processor rather than an unreliable mess of digital gates (or worse, analog logic).
There's obviously a point where there are diminishing returns, and probably another one where more complexity actually decreases reliability.
> Smart things would ideally just revert back to being functional dumb things (rather than bricks) if their electronics fail.
If possible, yes. That's only really an option for simple devices.
You said it so well, cars have become too bloated with software that barely any local mechanic would want to touch it. Happened to me and this is the major reason why I am slowly shifting to older cars, they are way easier and cheaper to repair.
Its not just software though, even the lights on your cars now are not easily user serviceable anymore. New cars with LED lights built in have core charges/deposits attached to them, they cost multiple hundreds of dollars and if you want to get your core deposit refund you must return the light. Compared to 15+ years ago, you go to your local store, buy a new light for $10-30, replace it and you're on your way.
Ford apparently ended the core charge program for lighting in 2020, but other manufactures continue, and that is just one thing that was common for users to service themselves in the past. It's not going to get better.
On one hand, it's okay. Cars are becoming a service, which they are anyway. Most people want to get transported, they don't want to drive, nor they want to maintain a car. Collective interests are pushing the whole industry toward this. (The goal of decreasing emissions through the whole lifecycle/value-chain, more safety for everyone involved, not just for those in cars; EV-ification itself pushes everything toward consolidation, as cars become simpler, but more one-time CapEx intensive, as the battery costs a lot, and then it just works for a million miles. AAaand then the whole need/goal of densification of cities, more public transportation, etc.)
On the other hand right to repair is very important. Walled gardens suck. Still hundreds of millions of people live in rural areas in the so called developed world, etc. And I don't want to subsidize the industry, I'm willing to pay more up-front, if it means I can just to replace the fucking light bulb.
Same here - I have owned an old petrol Vauxhall for years as my runaround car and it's so much easier to deal with. The big issue I have with newer cars is that the computers mask any developing issues until they get to a point when they just give up. A less sophicsticated car starts to just feel different a long time before it outright fails.
IT people with mechanical sympathy aren’t exactly an endangered species but we are rare enough that it becomes a bonding exercise (leatherman knives or pocket flashlights are our shibboleths).
If you’re a kid and you also have IT skills you’re going to be interested in IT unless there are extenuating circumstances, like wanting to stay rural, or a family business, or friends and family with union influence. Easier on your body and pays at least as well. So a car mechanic with heavy IT or electrical skills is going to be in short supply. Which is a problem when all cars are electrified.
Heh, we were stuck in a carpark for 3 hours because the 2025 battery cell in our key remote went dead on a cold walk around a local lake.
It's supposed to have a backup but, like most backups, I hadn't tested that it works and for some reason the RFID reader part wouldn't connect with the car.
Use of a 2025 cell would be rather irritating to me, because in my experience CR2016 or CR2032 are both more common, and it seems like it should not be hard to fit a 2032 into most keyfob designs.
Hmmm... maybe this thread will have an answer to the question that has been on my mind for a while. Sometime in the next 5-7 years, I think I'm going to be in the market for a new car. Are there any manufacturers out there whose niche is "dumb cars"? If so, they can have my money.
I for one am very happy that RedHat is putting in these efforts to improve startup time of podman. This is extremely necessary if our industry has to survive. Last time we tried using podman in our product, it was such a performance mess. We had to completely abandon our product. Our product would have disrupted the entire juicer market if podman was efficient at that time, our's was the only juicer which had containers running in it.
Hoping to get back to it once this version of podman is released. Thank you RedHat team; we'll send you one of our juicers as a thank you gift.
It's also a liability issue. If a company allows tinkering with the software in the car it opens itself up to massive lawsuits.
If we have a right to repair here, we also need to see how to handle liability here. If you flash your own software on the motor controller and subsequently mow through a group of people because you forgot to do a plausibility check on the accelerator pedal value who takes responsibility then?
Even if you just get the original software, how do we ensure you flash it correctly?
If you get the schematics, how do we know used the right parts that are rated for 125°C temperatures.
Lol, this is absolute funny, every example you came up with has already been there for years. Aren't cars being modded every day, ECU tuning, engine mods, etc?
Go ahead sue the company, companies aren't some innocent babies, they can afford to quickly dismiss the claim by just pointing towards the mod.
Auto Companies have never been held liable for a car that has been modded.
Does it waste money to be sued? Yes!
But does it save a lot of money for consumers and is much better for the environment? Yes!
If companies are greedy/selfish about their profits then consumers don't need to think about how right to repair hurts those companies.
The EPA has suggested they will hold companies liable in the future. It hasn't happened yet, but they are hinting. If it is just one hobbyist they don't care, but there is a whole industry of chip your diesel truck and those chips clearly increase pollution. A modern diesel truck doesn't emit black smoke, but a large % of the diesel trucks you see are "rolling coal" which is a sure sign that someone has disabled the emissions controls.
> The EPA has suggested they will hold companies liable in the future.
The EPA can suggest all it wants. Holding one entity liable for the actions of an entirely different entity beyond the control of the former's is asinine, and I can guarantee you these automakers will gladly sic their armies of lawyers at a Supreme-Court-bound case and/or their armies of lobbyists at legislatively castrating the EPA if the EPA made any such attempt.
On top of that, the EPA is virtually irrelevant for EVs, and yet EVs are just as locked down (if not moreso), so I don't buy the "EPA might punish us" argument for that reason, too.
Not disabled the emissions controls, but deliberately remapped it to grossly overfuel at large throttle settings.
Why people want to trade off power for a big cloud of black smoke is beyond me, but there we are. If they want to get 50bhp from a nine litre engine, that's their concern.
The liability excuse is a lie told to you by companies trying to increase their profits.
Who is liable if you tweak the software on your 2023 Mercedes? The same person who is liable if you tweak the hardware on your 1987 Chevy. There's plenty of precedent on how to deal with this.
> If you flash your own software on the motor controller and subsequently mow through a group of people because you forgot to do a plausibility check on the accelerator pedal value who takes responsibility then?
I would, obviously, for making the unsafe modification. In what multiverse would the manufacturer be liable for something entirely outside the manufacturer's control?
It should be, but right to repair is mostly not about diagnosis and repair. Instead you are seeing a bait and switch where someone wants to disable emissions controls and claims that is a repair.
What can a mechanic not do to a modern car with the standard scan tools and training? Most old school mechanics still lack the training to work on computers, but those that have that training have no problem fixing cars.
> It should be, but right to repair is mostly not about diagnosis and repair. Instead you are seeing a bait and switch where someone wants to disable emissions controls and claims that is a repair.
Well first of all that happens even under the current draconian anti repair setups already and secondly thats a felony. Just because you can do sth illegal doesn't mean we should child proof our whole society so you can't do anything anymore just because someone MAY do something illegal.
We still allow you to buy knifes, in some places even guns.
If you had a little more software in your car it could automatically remediate the issue and you'd be on your way with no repairman involved or at least tell the repairman exactly what to fix. Maybe you could fix it with the step-by-step workflow on your console.
Indeed. When I took my car in last winter because the light had come on for no apparent reason, as the car was running fine, they charged me $140 to take it out on the road to try to find the reason. No reason was found. Two weeks later, the light came on again (towards the end of 2022). The car was and is running fine. The light will remain on until July when I take it in for a scheduled oil change.
Sounds like it was an intermittent fault? If so, those are notoriously hard for any mechanic to diagnose. Cars _usually_ store code history but it's up to the manufacturer and often the data they provide to the mechanic with a scan tool is misleading or an outright pack of lies.
But the mechanics using their professional grade code reader and related equipment couldn't figure out what's causing it. At least I'm comfortable with "unknown" after that's their diagnosis; I don't think that would be the case if I did it and got that result.
Supposedly the electronics were too complicated for a shop to diagnose and fix the car on the spot, but I imagine the real problem is that diagnosing non-obvious problems is tough for anyone to do on the spot because all mainline service centers for the big manufacturers are weeks behind and can't just squeeze in the 4 man hours it might take to tear down and diagnose random problems. Older cars and systems were cheaper and easier to diagnose, but they also probably broke down once a year or more, while I had no issues with a 80k miles-in-2-years 2018 Honda Accord and still going strong with a 60k mile no-maintenance 2020 Tesla Model 3 SR+.
Visual Basic was an incredible leap forward in programming in that it made programming accessible to much wider range of people. People that just wanted to make a computer perform a task without necessarily writing a commercial product or changing the world. Being a child of the 70's/80's, I was fortunate enough to learn by just diving in and writing Basic on a BBC Model B. I think the problem people have with BASIC is the 'B' for Beginner. It created a lot of snobbery. I remember being amazed when Windows came out because it brought a level of consistency to everyday software which meant that by and large you could get the basics of a piece of software without a manual. Before VB, there was a huge barrier to programming in Windows because for a long time it was C which, for all it's power, is not a language many people should be using. I suspect a lot of people here won't have experienced starting with an empty Window, dropping a Button on it, double clicking the Button and being dropped straight into the event handler code. It was a revelation. Especially when you realised that you got access to all of the other Windows goodies like printing, database access etc just by dropping a control onto a Form. Software development now is a long way away from the ease of access that VB gave us and is probably poorer for it.
