

Reports Persist of Apple Store Budget Cuts, Emphasis on Revenue - blario
http://www.ifoapplestore.com/db/2012/08/27/reports-persist-of-budget-cuts-emphasis-on-revenue/

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siglesias
This second-guessing of the post-Jobs executive team has gotten really out of
hand, though this was to be expected to some degree I suppose.

My personal experience with Apple Retail has still been nothing short of
stellar, recently with two almost-no-questions-asked full replacements of a
faulty iPad and Retina MBP. Sometimes strolling through Apple stores I have
wondered if they were overstaffed, based on the simple fact that lots of
people know how to use the popular devices and probably don't have as many
questions as they did back when the store was mainly about selling Macs and
digital cameras.

As for cost cutting, Apple has been doing it for years. Witness, for example,
the radical reduction in pack-in goodies over the course of the development of
the iPod. The second generation iPods came with a carrying case, remote, and
charging brick [1]. The third left out the remote and carrying case [2]. The
fourth left out the dock [3]. The fifth left out the brick [4].

Guaranteed if Cook had been in charge these would have been decried as
evidence of Apple becoming a stingy, bean counting big corporation that lost
its soul to save some money on pack-ins. In reality they were cutting fat and
passed the savings on to us.

1)
[http://ilounge.com/assets/images/reviews_apple/ipod20gb/imag...](http://ilounge.com/assets/images/reviews_apple/ipod20gb/image/ipod20gb_16.jpg)
2)
[http://www.ilounge.com/assets/images/reviews_apple/ipod15gb/...](http://www.ilounge.com/assets/images/reviews_apple/ipod15gb/2cbigtn.jpg)
3)
[http://www.ilounge.com/assets/images/reviews_apple/4gpower/p...](http://www.ilounge.com/assets/images/reviews_apple/4gpower/package.jpg)
4)
[http://www.ilounge.com/assets/images/reviews_apple/ipod5/5bo...](http://www.ilounge.com/assets/images/reviews_apple/ipod5/5box3.jpg)

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yuhong
Retail cost-cutting and pack-in goodies are different.

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siglesias
Isn't the experience diminished in both cases?

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sneak
I think it's a fallacy to believe that suddenly Apple became stupid just
because there's no more Steve.

I bet there's a lot more to this story than we can see at the moment.

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hpvic03
Is it? Apple under Jobs was defined by complete perfectionism, which enabled
it to create great products.

Steve had great taste - he was as much Chief Designer as he was CEO. Focus
comes from the top, and the focus on design has been Apple's secret sauce.
Cook is not a designer. His focus is going to be on operations, and Apple's
design will suffer for it.

I'm pretty sure those recent Apple Genius ads would have Steve rolling in his
grave. I predict that those are just the beginning.

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cageface
_Last year when Cook became the permanent CEO, he hired Browett from UK-based
Dixons to head the retail chain. Cook was apparently attracted by Browett’s
like-minded focus on the more traditional concepts of retailing—logic and
process leading to revenues and profits._

This is exactly why I'm short on Apple now. You'd be hard pressed to find
somebody better than Cook to squeeze every last ounce of waste out of your
supply chain but I see zero evidence of Jobs' uncanny product vision so far.

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taligent
Which is hilarious because all of Apple's current products (and those for the
next few years) were created whilst Steve Jobs was still alive.

As was revealed in his biography.

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tomflack
To make the parent comment more relevant, I've taken "product vision" to
include the quality of the retail store experience.

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cageface
Exactly. It's the _intuitive_ understanding of what made Apple different and
so successful.

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josephlord
Well that is exactly what you would fear if you hire someone from Dixons to
run the stores.

In the UK they have a reputation for uninformed staff and the physical stores
aren't bad but they definitely aren't Apple Store quality either.

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r00fus
I seriously have no idea how John Browett got this position. His resume makes
him sound like a complete ill-fit for this position

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yuhong
Read the entire article.

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jaytaylor
Tim Cook continues to chip away at the Apple empire.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs.

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polarix
The late Jobs years really were quite something!

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nirvana
There are two things coming that will cause Apple to be making changes now:
First is the economy is cooling off globally. The second is that Apple has
major new product opportunities and it makes changes well in advance so that
these new product launches go well.

On the economy:

The economy is really slowing down globally right now. This is much like the
summer of 2007... the hints are there but it took a year before all hell broke
loose (saw it in the dotcom bust as well. Same hints.) No way to know how bad
it will be or if it will be anything very startling, or just a couple years of
lower growth.

But when this happens companies feel it early, and the good ones react, and
this happens months if not a year before things start to show up in the
popular press like they did in 2008.

On future products: One thing intrinsic to apple's DNA is evolution. This is a
company that is not complacent.

It is also a company that doesn't broadcast its intentions or its moves or its
plans.

This means that when it sees opportunity, it starts to make changes well in
advance of when it will be able to capitalize on that opportunity.

The Apple Store itself is a good example of this: One of the reasons the
retail operation was created was to be able to eventually sell the iPhone and
iPad directly to the public in a way that couldn't happen before. Macs can be
sold online, but the iPad and iPhone need to be seen to be understood.

Apple stores have always done very well on the metrics apple cares about, one
of which is profit. I don't see any reason to believe they are going to
sacrifice those metrics to try and boost profit.

