Apple will slowly but surely change as new CEO John Ternus settles into his role, and according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, those changes will include the return of the dedicated Genius Bar at Apple Stores.
“Genius Bar” is still the term Apple uses when you book in-person tech support at an Apple Store, but starting way back in 2016, Apple stopped creating genius bars that were set up like, y’know, actual bars in its stores. Locations like its Carnegie Library store in Washington, D.C. received a “Genius Grove,” a ficus-adorned space “where Apple’s team of Geniuses will offer personalized technical support and advice,” according to a news release. That specific Genius Grove has long tables with rows of stools on both sides. It’s remarkably similar to one of the seating options at Chipotle.
According to a contemporaneous story by the New York Times’ Vindu Goel, the 2016 change allowed for “room to sit and more Apple customer service specialists to troubleshoot devices.” That story quotes Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail at the time as saying, “We didn’t want it to feel like a store. We wanted it to feel like a town square — very open, and everyone invited.”
And maybe that was considered very successful, but I don’t know anyone who talks about taking their laptop to the Genius Grove. Commenters on this site seem to unanimously mourn the Genius Bar—not necessarily as a physical place, but perhaps as a a blanket term referring to a lost era when going to the Apple Store was an exceptional retail experience.
So new Ternus is reportedly taking us all back in time, according to Gurman. “In many stores,” Gurman writes:
“Apple will replace the video walls with dedicated Genius Bars, marking a return to a familiar element from an earlier era. The design resembles the Genius Bars of the past but with an all-wood look.”
In the shorter term, other changes are supposedly coming soon that could make the Apple Store worth visiting for people who have fallen out of love with it. The retail spaces will reportedly soon feature rethought areas along the far walls where customers can become familiar with Apple’s still-not-announced line of revamped home assistant devices.
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