
Apple Names Deirdre O’Brien Senior Vice President of Retail and People - coloneltcb
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/02/apple-names-deirdre-obrien-senior-vice-president-of-retail-and-people/
======
happybuy
This is likely a firing as Apple Retail has been practically treading water
since Angela came on board. She failed to address the major issues with
Apple's retail offering including:

\- Failure to be a growth engine for the company. Originally Apple stores
helped to drive growth of Apple and introduce new customers as the stores were
rolled out across the US and then worldwide. Apple retail should have been the
spearhead for greater China dominance and a strong foothold in India. Both
have not occurred.

\- Cultural issues. Apple retail has changed from being a pleasant experience
where staff were encouraged to help customers with issues (not matter what) to
merely parroting a company line about why they cannot do anything with your
issue because that's the company policy. Angela also kept trotting out the
'town square' community BS as well which rubs non-US citizens completely the
wrong way; a US corporation trying to co-opt foreign public space for their
sales offering.

\- Lack of support integration. Apple has had a number of high profile support
issues and failures including battery gate and the MacBook keyboard issues.
Instead of becoming a proactive support channel to help customers with these
issues, Apple Retail worked as the company's PR firewall... exacerbating a bad
situation for customers who experienced these problems. Support times at Apple
Stores have increased and the experience has worsened.

\- No innovation. Apple retail hasn't significantly changed or improved since
Angela came on-board. 'Today at Apple' is a re-brand of the many sessions that
Apple Stores have always had. The interior design changes and architectural
changes are more Jony's doing than Angela's. In 5 years most of the change has
been superficial with the core changes that have evolved actually degrading
customers experience.

Glad to see the exec change. Took 5 years and should have happened earlier,
but better late than never.

~~~
rkho
I'm not sure where your perceptions come from (such as if you've ever worked
at an Apple Retail store) so I'm going to give you my perspective and only on
a couple of your points because I can't speak to all of them.

I worked in Apple Retail under Ron Johnson and John Browett.

From what I recall, the original intent of these stores was to have them be
"gathering places" for people -- similar to a town square. This concept's as
old as the first of the stores.

During the ten months John Browett was in charge, the store I worked at saw
significant attrition due to cut hours, an increased emphasis on offering more
support than we had the resources for, and a very obvious push to attach
multiple accessories onto each sale.

Those "Today at Apple" rebranding you're talking about? They were essentially
gutted to quick, useless Q&A sessions when Browett worked there.

I really don't think Angela was a problem. If anything her hire was a breath
of fresh air for them.

~~~
barkingcat
Whatever the original intentions, I can say honestly that an Apple Store in
its current form is never a "gathering place" or a "town square".

The experience from beginning to end is always - line up at the front, talk to
an Apple employee, depending on whether you have an appointment or not, get
shepparded to a lineup (whether at the genius bar, the teach and learn table,
or the repair pickup table, etc) and wait in line until your turn.

If you are just browsing / window shopping, the experience is jam yourself
into a packed tiny space packed with human smells of sweat and farts, get a
stern looking up and down by the security people, and try to get a
computer/phone/idevice to look at. If you take too long, other people will
either try to edge you out, or eventually you get an apple employee asking
whether you want to buy it or if they can show you anything.

This is NOT a gathering place/town square. Of course. Being a commercially
oriented sales space it can't be because that violates the purpose of the
space. I'm not saying that you can't build a space like this, but the way
Apple has structured the retail stores makes it extremely sales oriented.

Taking the Starbucks example quoted below. When you go to starbucks, get a
latte, and sit down to browse your computer, you don't have Starbucks
employees coming to you asking if you want a pumpkin spice latte or if you
want some training on how to be a coffee barista in your own home too. You
just want to take a seat and do whatever - none of the business of the store
employees. It's just a place to sit. Of course, you should / need to buy
something to sit there, but once you are there, you usually are left alone to
do whatever, meet friends, have a date, etc. That's a good "gathering space"
concept.

~~~
nihonde
Your recounting of your experience is really far from mine. My local Apple
Store (WTC in NYC) is very accessible and friendly. If anything, I find it
mildly annoying to have to chit-chat with staff when I know what I want. With
an appointment, support wait times are minimal and so far always helpful and
friendly. I walk my dogs through the store sometimes, and even they love it!

~~~
rootusrootus
My experiences at the Portland, Oregon Pioneer Place store are similar to GP.
Come in the door, talk to an employee (sometimes there is a line, sometimes
not), get shepherded over to another line and wait for a lot longer to see
another employee, and then either wait a long time to get what you came for,
if it's that easy, or they sit you down somewhere to wait until someone can
really deal with you.

I don't go unless I have at least an hour of spare time and whatever I need
can only reasonably be accomplished at the Apple Store. The place is a zoo,
even if you're just browsing it's elbow to elbow.

The employees are nice, but I am aghast every time I go at how poor of an
experience it is compared to what I think Apple should be capable of. Luckily
when they _do_ finally get to me, I've always had the issue solved (usually a
new device) but up until that final encounter I just feel like a number. The
fact that I have to stand on a concrete floor the entire time makes me double
grumpy because my old-man feet do not like it one bit.

~~~
SyneRyder
Similar experience in Perth, Australia. Apple is vastly more popular in 2019
than they were in 2009, so the magical Apple experience of seeing someone
immediately & getting a while-you-wait repair is gone [1]. Even the
appointment system is just choosing a time when you're allowed to come into
the store to wait for half an hour until someone is available. They really
need more stores & more staff, but that would eat into Apple's profits.

The one difference I've had is that I'm not even getting my issues resolved
anymore. (Full sob story is in my comment history.) I'm typing this on a
Thinkpad X1 and gave up on Apple after 15 years.

[1] Does anyone else remember when Apple would give you a coffee voucher for a
local cafe while you were waiting, and send you a txt message to come back to
the store once your MacBook Pro was fixed or replaced? They used to be
magical, and they could afford to do all that because the machines were built
for life & repairs were rare. That's all gone now.

~~~
ksec
There are now 900M iPhone users and 100M Mac users and 200M iPad users, while
some may be overlap, there is give or take 1 Billion users Apple potentially
serve. And yet they still only have 500 Stores, with more than half of them in
US. So in terms of users and Store distribution US has a much better Ratio,
and hence the favourable experience in the two previous reply, coming from US.

A long time ago ( I think it was 2015 ) I had expected Apple to reach 1000
Apple Store Worldwide by 2020. But just like every part of their
infrastructure, ( CDN, Datacentre, Solar Energy, Recycling etc ) their "Asset-
Light" strategy, being extremely conservative with any Asset has hold them
back.

------
sparkpeasy
Just last week on January 28th Vogue Business ran a huge feature on Angela
Ahrendts with an exclusive interview and photo shoot, and now this? Seems like
weird timing with how "work in progress" Vogue characterized her work at Apple
with the tone of the piece. [https://www.voguebusiness.com/companies/angela-
ahrendts-appl...](https://www.voguebusiness.com/companies/angela-ahrendts-
apple-retail-strategy)

"After turning round the fortunes of Burberry, Angela Ahrendts is five years
into reimagining Apple’s bricks-and-mortar presence. Vogue Business meets the
tech behemoth's senior vice president of retail on the steps of its soon-to-
be-unveiled Washington, DC, flagship"

~~~
Despegar
Depends on whether Apple PR organized that profile of her or whether she did
herself. If she was planning on leaving she'd want to go out with her
accomplishments highlighted.

~~~
mrpippy
I don't think there's any way a magazine would profile a senior Apple exec
without Apple PR being deeply involved.

~~~
jldugger
I'm sure there is, but they'd be asked to leave Apple shortly after.

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CameronBanga
It probably has more to do with Apple getting bigger than anything else. But
been increasingly disappointed with the general level of product knowledge
amongst Apple employees over the past ~2-3 years.

Undeniably must be difficult as you grow and have so many stores, etc. But on
my last Apple store trip, I had interactions with 2 employees. One incorrectly
told me that there was no Smart Battery case in stock for the XR (it was
available on the Apple Store app?). And another made a mistake about the
length of power cable that shipped with the new MacBook Air. Kinda a bummer.

~~~
saagarjha
I think there's been a shift in focus in the retail segment to hiring
employees who are better at interacting with customers rather than actual
"geniuses".

~~~
madeofpalk
This has not been a shift, or at least recently. I started working there in
2012 and the focus was always on hiring people that can actually interact with
humans, rather than nerds that know everything.

Its much easier to teach product knowledge than team interaction skills.

~~~
saagarjha
Yes, this has always been a focus obviously, but now I feel you're getting
fewer of the people who can tell you exactly what's wrong with your Mac/iPhone
and instead getting people who tell customers that they should close all their
iOS apps when they're done with them to "clear the RAM" (this was the Genius
helping the person next to me last time I went there). I'm not a retail
employee, but from my conversations with them there's less technical training.

~~~
Despegar
If Apple wanted to staff their stores with early 2000s Apple Store Geniuses,
they'd have like 100 stores worldwide.

Apple has way more customers, way more stores, and way more products for that
to be realistic.

~~~
saagarjha
Yeah, this seems to be the unfortunate reality of the situation :(

------
minimaxir
The subtitle is the real story: "Angela Ahrendts Plans April Departure After
Five Successful Years"

~~~
jjtheblunt
A more interesting subtitle would note that Angela Ahrendts got about 75
million to join, and that's all vested, so bye bye.

------
fmajid
Ahrendt's tenure coincided with a sever degradation in the quality of service
levels at the Genius Bar, and no amount of bling Hermès Apple Watch straps can
make up for that.

~~~
ghaff
Since we're in anecdote territory, I learned that screen de-lamination issues
that occurred on some ~2015 MacBook Pros were being covered under an extended
warranty. Took mine in (which had some screen issues). The Genius Bar guy took
one look at it. Said yep "Haven't seen quite that interesting a pattern."
Asked me if I had things backed up. Apologized for the fact they have to
replace the whole display including my stickers on the back. And took care of
everything at no charge.

I'm sure it was all within policy but how many companies would try to put up
at least a half-hearted fight?

~~~
wil421
Had a 2011 MBP with an open recall for an AMD graphics card issue. Took mine
in, opened it up, and the genius said yup it’s a graphics card issue. Just
need to run this test to get your refund.

5 tries and an hour later the computer crashed during each test. Came back 3
separate days talked to everyone I could and the computer couldn’t complete
the test. Sorry you can’t get recall if the test isn’t run rule are rules.

Haven’t bought a MBP since because the new prices are insane. I’m not risking
a $2.5k-3k laptop dying in a few years, or having keyboard issues, or the
display-gate issue. Everything is glued in nowadays you can’t even replace
simple parts.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
That's very strange to me, in that my experience was literally the reverse of
that. I thought it was an Nvidia GPU issue, but perhaps it was a separate
recall. In any case, the Genius took my MBP to the back of the store and came
back a few minutes later to say that he tried to run the test twice and the
MBP kernel panicked each time, so he was calling that a confirmation of the
bad GPU.

------
wtmt
This sounds like an abrupt and possibly unexpected departure of Angela
Ahrendts (whether voluntary or forced), since Apple is assigning one
additional division to Deirdre O’Brien. It’s not that she (Deirdre O’Brien)
would be incapable of leading both people and retail, but Apple looks like a
company that needs more focused attention on products, services and retail.

Could it be that Apple is searching for someone to head retail and that this
is just an interim appointment?

------
mcast
I recently visited an Apple Store in University Village (Seattle) and I was
impressed with how large the space was. I kept walking around the entire store
looking for their laptop displays thinking maybe they had removed it.

Alas, I found the MacBooks at the far back corner of the store with no one
around it, and they only had one table dedicated to the MacBook with only 1
laptop per model.

~~~
darkpuma
Heh, I was recently in that same Apple Store for a repair and was left with a
contradictory impression of it being empty yet crowded at the same time. It's
certainly a big space but, at least when I went, it was pretty crowded
anywhere there was seating. It was strange and not particularly pleasant.

~~~
btgeekboy
And there’s huge open spaces too! Why not, I dunno, put out another table of
computers? There is exactly one Mac mini on display in that entire store. God
help you if some kid’s too busy screwing around on YouTube to let you actually
shop.

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macintux
I saw some speculation a few years ago that Ahrendts might be groomed to take
over as CEO someday. I suppose that’s rather less likely now.

~~~
ninedays
Jeff Williams is the most likely candidate for the CEO job after Tim Cook
IMHO.

------
sonnyblarney
I don't see what the issues is, specifically. I've been to the store for
service a few times, it was very professional.

Everything seems generally well run.

What's the fuss?

Apple Retail needs to be executed well, and it's a strategic pillar, but
really in the end the stores in and of themselves are not going to be the
story.

I wonder what the real issues are.

I wonder how involved she was in pricing/promotional aspects, because her
strategic imperative on pricing may be a source of the problem.

Apple is getting a little expensive for it's britches and they have a great
brand, but this is not Burberry, it's tech, so utility factors in strongly. If
she was behind the expensive mac story ... then maybe. But somehow I doubt it.

I wonder what the real story is ...

------
gregimba
My personal experience at an apple store in the pseudo tech hub that is the
Domain Austin left a poor taste in my mouth. I went there to pickup a laptop
expecting a relatively painless and transparent experience and was left
wishing I had gone anywhere else but there. A long hour long wait with no
actually apology or contact after the initial checkin left me feeling rather
annoyed at the whole apple experience for the first time in my life.

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kalleboo
I don't even know what's going on with Apple Retail here in Japan. Rather than
expanding, they've actually closed Apple Stores in two cities, leaving you
with the absolutely terrible Authorized Repair Partners. Getting a MacBook Pro
repaired here is a trial in patience, it's a really poor experience - if it
wasn't for macOS I would have no reason to buy Apple in 2019.

~~~
ksec
The Stores were way too small, the new Apple Retail Strategy is to have bigger
Stores rather than small ones. The problem is they are closing them faster
than then could plan and open one.

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KevanM
Maybe the Apple Store will be redesigned so it's actually responsive and works
on mobile.

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saagarjha
As an aside, I find it amusing the share icons on the images don't render
correctly in Safari (there's just a black bar at the button) but do in Chrome.

~~~
jjtheblunt
they render fine in Safari : maybe transient CDN glitch?

~~~
saagarjha
Huh, strange, they're showing up now. You might be right about the CDN glitch.

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math_random
The new iPhones are not that good, too expensive and lot of software issues.
Can't really blame retail for that for selling $1000 device.

~~~
zapzupnz
They've managed selling $1000 devices that many found of questionable value
for a lot longer than Ahrendts' reign, so this argument doesn't quite hold.
Meanwhile, the competition manages the exact same feat, so your comment feels
like more of a swipe at Apple's products rather than a discussion of the
actual intrigue of O'Brien's sudden appointment.

