Touching the back wall of the Apple store

Re:Touching the back wall of the Apple store by fennecfoxy on Monday June 30, 2025 @05:04AM (#44421052)

I remember the first time I tried to buy something at an Apple store. Usually avoid 'em cause I don't like Apple as a company, but I do like their laptops. I'd decided an M3 air was gonna be perfect as a general use laptop.

Walked into the store, waited 30 minutes for one of their "friendly, professional staff" to come up & help me, making eye contact, etc.

Eventually I had to walk up to one of them standing there and tell them I wanted to buy something. Then it turns out they didn't even have one in stock...in their flagship London store...

Literally I wanted to walk in, pay immediately & walk out. I already knew exactly what I wanted. I don't know why people laude the "Apple experience".

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Re:Touching the back wall of the Apple store by nxobject on Monday June 30, 2025 @06:56AM (#44421726)

Ironically, enough, I've made the exact same purchase (well, not the color, but still an M3 MacBook Air) -- the Apple experience for me was literally "purchase from the online store in the evening, pick up from physical store next day during lunch break."

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Re:Touching the back wall of the Apple store by esskay on Monday June 30, 2025 @05:12AM (#44421112)

Their flagship shops (Especially London) are really not places you go to buy on a whim, it's why they have a booking and collection process - yes it might suck but its by far one of their busiest shops.

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Re:Touching the back wall of the Apple store by fennecfoxy on Monday June 30, 2025 @05:46AM (#44421309)

Well it was more the store was full of teenagers and kids generally fucking around while their parents browsed. Plenty of those parents were getting attended to by staff - even if they had bookings, it takes a spare staff member (of which there were many just milling around) one minute to ask me what I'm here for and recommend I make a booking if I had a complex request.

The conversation literally would have been "can I help you?" "Yes I want a space grey m3 macbook air, 16gb ram 512gb ssd, I will pay for it right now and then leave this terrible place tyvm". With the laptop on-hand the purchasing process would've taken as little time as it took for them to ram it into pos and for my phone nfc to pay.

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Re:Touching the back wall of the Apple store by esskay on Monday June 30, 2025 @07:51AM (#44422145)

Out of interest how long ago was this? The Covent Garden and Oxford street ones literally have a queue line for pickups and purchases over in the far right. Not 100% sure how long Oxford street has had theirs (at least since Xmas) but I know for a fact it's existed at Covent Garden's since day one as I used to work there.

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Re:Touching the back wall of the Apple store by fennecfoxy on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @10:30AM (#44444197)

I'm trying to get better at replying to my internet friendos!

It was last year, 2024, in the year of our lord ChatGPT.

Oh, I certainly had a good look around in the 20-30 minutes I was waiting for attention. But I couldn't find anything like what you describe, nor staff to interact with me to at least get directed to the right place (which would take 10 seconds).

I mean I'm not saying it's a _bad_ shop. I'm just saying it's not always the angelic, golden, sterile, etc experience that many claim.

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Re:Touching the back wall of the Apple store by Chris2048 on Monday June 30, 2025 @06:00AM (#44421394)

I mean, it sounds like the XP was fine, they were just out of stock.. I assume they offered to order one for you, otherwise there's not much can be done about the logistics.

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