One of the things Apple’s retail head Angela Ahrendts said in her interview with Fast Company‘s Rick Tetzei is that Apple had made the decision to back away from Black Friday sales because “being good to your employees will always be good for business.”

Rather than extending store hours for Black Friday events, or just turning the stores into even more crowded places during what has increasingly turned into Black November rather than just Black Friday, Ahrendts decided to give staff a break. That’s great and should be applauded but why not just do an online sale? Do the computers need the time off too?

Even more curious, Apple, who controls US retailer pricing, seems to be letting every US retailer knock huge amounts off of all Apple products for Black Friday…

It’s not as if Apple has ever indulged in Black Friday in a big way. Pretty much what it did was extend educational pricing to everyone, which amounted to a typical discount of around 10%. Nice, but not dramatic. It went a little further on third-party accessories, discounting these by 15-20%, but again nothing like the kind of deals available on other products.

The problem for Apple bargain hunters was you couldn’t do much better elsewhere – especially on iOS devices. Apple reportedly offered retailers such slim margins on its products, sometimes as low as two or three percent, that other stores had little room for manoeuvre.

This, however, appears to be changing. My colleagues on 9to5Toys have been regularly spotting decent discounts on iPads beginning soon after a new model is launched, and we’re already seeing some early and heavy discounting on Apple products – including the Apple Watch. Some of it could be retailers running loss-leaders to get people in the doors, but the longer-term discounting seen suggests that it’s more likely to be Apple offering better margins to facilitate such offers.

Which is a tactic I think makes a lot of sense. Apple’s vision for its retail stores is for them to be calm and peaceful places where you can play with the products, get advice from staff and assistance with existing products. The reality in the bigger Apple Stores at peak times is very far removed from this – packed with so many people you can scarcely move, let alone get a decent chunk of time to play with a product or have a relaxed conversation with a member of staff. The very last thing Apple wants to do is bring in hordes of bargain hunters to make the situation worse.

Even without Black November, however, Apple remains a victim of its own success in terms of the retail experience. It’s rolling out new stores all the time, many cities now having multiple outlets, but is still struggling to cope. Which is why I think Ahrendts’ vision is about moving the retail stores to more of a showroom experience, with as much of the purchasing as possible driven online. Jony Ives’ redesign of the stores also seems to give them more of a showroom type feel.

We saw this showroom approach with the Apple Watch, of course. Rather than have the crazy launch-day store experience we see with iPhones, Apple initially made the decision to offer try-ons and demonstrations in store, then to direct customers to make their purchases online. In other words, to have the Apple Store act as a showroom.

But the other thing we saw then, and which impressed me at the time, was the degree of integration between the offline and online worlds. As I wrote then:

I waited there all of ten seconds before I was taken to meet the man who would be handling my try-on. When he pulled up my appointment on his terminal, he could see the two watches I had favorited on the Apple website, and immediately pulled the first of these out of the drawer: the stainless steel with black classic buckle.

I was instantly impressed. It had always previously felt like the retail stores and online store were entirely separate worlds, but here the two were seamlessly integrated.

This is the type of experience Ahrendts had previously been working to deliver in her previous role as Burberry CEO, her vision then of a retail future that completely blurred the lines between the physical and digital environments.

We’ve also seen greater integration on Apple’s website. Previously, you used the main site to learn about products, then went to the separate online store section to buy something. Now, there’s just one site, with a Buy option for each product – something that already seems so natural it’s hard to imagine why Apple would ever have done it any other way.

Ahrendts’ vision for Burberry went further, with things like chip-enabled products that would display information about themselves in a mirror when you tried them on, and ‘magical trays’ that would play a product video as soon as you picked them up.

Of course, Apple has one huge advantage over Burberry: its products can already introduce themselves – and we’ve already seen one in-store change to reflect this. Out went the old companion iPad-based Smart Signs and in came apps running on the demo products themselves. That reduced clutter and allowed room for more people to play with products – which helps reduce crowding as fewer people are waiting to have their play.

We’re not seeing a complete transition of the Apple Store experience. I think Apple sees the launch day queues for the iPhone as too good a PR coup to pass up. But I do think we’ll see further moves toward Apple Stores being less geared to immediate sales – and that Black Friday bargain hunters will need to continue to look elsewhere.

Dan DeSilva kindly contributed to this piece.

Filed under: Opinion Tagged: AAPL, Angela Ahrendts, Apple Retail Store, Apple retail stores, Apple Store, Black Friday, Black Friday Apple, Black Friday iPad, Black Friday iPhone, Black Friday Mac

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After just over a year at Apple, former Mercedes R&D chief Johann Jungwirth left the company earlier this month to join Volkswagen AG as the new ‘Head of Digital Transformation’. Even though his official title at Apple was “Director of Mac Systems Engineering”, the executive was rumored to be working on the company’s electric car codenamed “Project Titan” due to his extensive automotive background and the timing of the hire, which was followed by several other engineering hires with experience in the auto industry.

Jungwirth is joining Volkswagen amid the “DieselGate” scandal which is pushing the company to try to reinvent itself.

From his LinkedIn profile:

If Jungwirth was indeed working on “Project Titan”, his leaving isn’t likely to make the team short-staffed considering recent reports asserting that Apple tripled the size of the development team by adding 1,200 employees to the program.

When working at Mercedes, Jungwirth was leading the company’s “connected car” effort. Apple recently hired another engineer with a similar experience in fleet management of connected cars and digital license plates.

Mark Gurman contributed to this report.

Filed under: Apple Car Tagged: Apple Car, Johann Jungwirth, Project Titan, Volkswagen

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Google will soon be bringing a major new feature to its Maps app for iOS: full offline support. Google Maps has some utility already when used offline, but an upcoming update will make it much more robust when used without Internet access. For example, before you could see an area on Google Maps offline but not do much else with it. Coming soon, Google will enable features including navigation and business information lookup without requiring an active Internet connection.

Google Maps’ upcoming offline features work by allowing you to first download sections of the map for offline use ahead of time. Once you download an area over Wi-Fi, even features like search and viewing business hours and ratings will work without ever touching your cellular data.

Some features will still require an active Internet connection when using Google Maps, as you would expect, like receiving traffic alerts during your route. But all in the all, offline mode for navigation and search should be huge for loads of users whether you’re counting data under a capped plan or just have poor access to a cellular connection in low coverage areas.

Google Maps’ new offline mode feature is rolling out on Android today, the company says, and coming soon to iOS. Google also recently updated Maps to work with Apple Watch.

Filed under: Apps Tagged: Google Maps, navigation

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Feature Request is a new regular 9to5Mac series where authors offer their opinions on how to improve popular hardware or software products.

Apple’s AirPort wireless routers aren’t cheap, but many people — including me — keep buying them because they “just work” most of the time. Connect an AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express to your cable modem and you’ll get a consistently great wireless connection across all of your Macs, iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, and accessories, as well as non-Apple products. But the AirPorts could do more, and Apple knows it. Four years ago, the company was openly working on some cool next-generation router features that apparently didn’t wind up in its devices. These days, with Apple TVs and AirPlay streaming at the peak of their popularity, Apple’s routers need to be smarter about streaming high-bitrate video and audio. Here’s how AirPort routers should take the next steps forward…

Using AirPort To Enable Faster, Lower-Bandwidth Software Updates (And Media Streaming?)

The AirPort family has been a good product line for Apple. Basic $99 and mid-range $199 AirPort routers are an insurance policy against losing hours of your life to solving arcane networking problems. Apple’s $299 to $399 hard drive-laden AirPort Time Capsules go a step further, insuring against losing months or years of your work by quietly backing up your Macs. Integrating a full hard drive into Time Capsules gives them the ability to store terabytes of data, but as $69 Apple TVs (which look virtually identical to current AirPort Express routers) demonstrate, Apple easily could include a flash memory cache in even entry-level AirPort devices.

Why would every AirPort need spare memory? An Apple user’s home or office typically hosts multiple Apple devices — yours, and ones belonging to your family members or coworkers. It’s not unusual for a family of four to have at least two Macs, a few iPads, and several iPhones. Similarly, businesses often have a lot of similar devices connecting to their networks. Why should every device have to individually download the same files (such as software updates) from Apple’s servers, wasting time and bandwidth in the process?

As 9to5Mac’s Seth Weintraub noted four years ago, Apple had a brilliant solution in mind for this.

What we do know is that Apple has been internally testing Time Capsules to cache Software Updates for both Mac and iOS devices. The way we’ve heard it works is that the new Time Capsule learns which devices connect to it via Wifi. It then goes out to Apple’s servers and downloads Software Updates for those products.

Doesn’t that sound great? You get home with your iPhone and the latest version of iOS is just waiting for you — and for every other iPhone in your house. Or, rather than downloading gigabytes worth of OS X over and over again for your Macs, a master file’s just sitting on your AirPort router waiting to install the right pieces on all of your machines. Another 9to5 report noted that Apple was so close to implementing this feature that references were being found in release of OS X. Code in AirPort Utility said:

Apple software updates that are copied to this [device] are available to anyone using this network.

Some people might argue that delta updates, device-specific OS builds, and/or asynchronous device updating reduce the need for a feature like this. But I’d personally rather download a slightly larger iOS or OS X build once and have the right pieces applied to all the devices in my home, than download slightly smaller builds from Apple’s servers over and over again. Think of the bandwidth you could save by having your AirPort router cache app updates and media files this way, as well…

Modern Routers Should Do Better At Prioritizing Media Streaming And Explaining Issues

One of the biggest issues I’ve seen with routers over the past five years is choking of streaming video or audio, an issue that can be external to your network (Netflix’s or your broadband provider’s fault) or internal (your router’s, cable modem’s, or device’s fault). An entire category of AirPlay speaker accessories withered on the vine because of widespread and never quite resolved problems with in-home audio streaming. Similarly, as Netflix and iTunes video streaming have become more popular, stories of stopping or stuttering videos are on the increase. Average people know that their streams aren’t working, but have no idea how to fix or even diagnose the problems.

It would be unfair (and factually inaccurate) to say that Apple has done nothing to remedy these issues. There have apparently been some quiet changes to Apple’s software to improve streaming reliability, but they haven’t been broadly communicated to consumers, and significant problems persist — both with the way routers prioritize streams, and their diagnostic tools. Adults don’t have an easy way to determine, for instance, whether their kids’ video streams or downloads are clogging the network. Nor do they have the ability to set streaming priority for certain devices or applications (say, Mom’s Office Mac or Apple TV wins out over Junior’s iPod touch).

Stuttering, stopping, and buffering happen when a data-hungry device can’t get fed at the pace it needs, and ultimately, the router is the hub where these decisions are made. Apple could make a real difference by giving users — specifically, wireless network owners — easy but powerful control over in-home competition for limited wireless bandwidth. It could also help a lot by improving iOS’s and OS X’s consumer-level diagnostic tools so that problem devices and streams could be quickly detected and labeled green/yellow/red, preferably with suggested fixes.

Most of the suggestions above could be implemented in software. Since nearly a year has passed since the last AirPort Extreme firmware update, it’s possible that Apple is working on a big fix, or that the same team was busy with something else. Regardless, now that the Apple TV has launched as an independent platform, helping users control the media streaming in their homes is going to become more important than ever before.

Something Else?

Reader Dan Bridgland wrote to us to suggest that he finds it “remarkable that Apple are still selling broadly mono feature devices like the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express.” Calling them “one trick ponies in an ever evolving and converging world,” Dan suggests that Apple integrate router features directly into cable modems, Apple TVs, and basic AirPlay adapters, getting rid of standalone AirPort routers in the process. What do you think?

More From This Author

Check out more of my editorials, How-To guides, and reviews for 9to5Mac here! I’ve covered a lot of different topics of interest to Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, and Apple Watch users. In addition to my popular guide to the best Apple Watch docks and stands, I’ve recently discussed how to safely prepare and wipe your iPhone for resale or trade-in, and how to get the best iPhone trade-in price to help buy an iPhone 6s, amongst many other topics.

Filed under: Apple TV, iOS, iOS Devices, Mac, Opinion Tagged: AirPort Extreme, Feature Request, Mac, Magic AirPort Extreme, OS X

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Apple recently confirmed that the Apple TV will get Siri support for Apple Music from the beginning of next year, and iDownloadBlog‘s Jeff Benjamin found that it’s already present in the beta of tvOS 9.1.

You can now direct the remote assistant to play any song or album directly from Apple Music, even if the song or album isn’t in your library. Siri can even search for songs on Apple Music, play Play Beats 1 radio, and more.

Benjamin demo’d the functionality in a video (below) … 

He found that you can tell Siri to play an artist, album, song or playlist, as well as play Beats 1 radio, mimicking the functionality offered on an iPhone and iPad.

Filed under: Apple Music, Apple TV Tagged: Apple Music, Apple TV, Siri, tvOS

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In a wide-ranging interview with the Telegraph, Apple CEO Tim Cook has hinted that the company may launch more health-focused products in future – but will keep those separate from the Apple Watch. The reason, he says, is that the FDA approval needed for full-on health devices would slow down the pace of innovation of the Watch.

Cook hints that Apple may have more plans for the health sphere, in a revelation which will intrigue Wall Street, but he doesn’t want the watch itself to become a regulated, government-licensed health product. “We don’t want to put the watch through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process. I wouldn’t mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it, but not the watch, because it would hold us back from innovating too much, the cycles are too long. But you can begin to envision other things that might be adjacent to it — maybe an app, maybe something else.” 

This represents a significant change from expectations …

It had previously been expected that Apple would add further sensors to future models of the Watch, giving it more health and fitness functionality. Speculation has included both O2 saturation – something that could potentially have been done with the existing heart-rate monitor – and blood sugar monitoring.

While Cook is giving nothing away, suggesting that future health plans may be limited to apps, many measurements would require hardware – and it now seems that hardware won’t be built into the Watch.

He again wouldn’t be drawn on Watch sales, but said that he expected to set a new sales record this quarter – though this is pretty much a no-brainer in the holiday season.

Similarly with the new Apple TV, he would say only that early sales have been “extremely strong, very strong.” He added that the number of apps being created have been “much larger than we would have predicted.” Given the variety of these – from games to home rentals – Cook argues that the device “will really change the living room entirely.”

He also deflected the talk of Apple offering its own TV subscription, replacing cable service.

We will see. The key question for us is: can we do something better, that acts as a catalyst? If we conclude that we can, then we would. But I wouldn’t do something just to do something.

Cook also suggested that with the launch of the iPad Pro would accelerate the post-PC era long predicted by Steve Jobs.

I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?

Yes, the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people. They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones.

He acknowledged that the move to larger iPhones had cannibalised existing iPad sales, but repeated an oft-heard line that Apple isn’t afraid to do so.

“I think if you have the larger phone, you’re less likely to have the iPad mini”, he says, though he insists that the demand won’t fall to zero.

Some consumers use the iPad mini to read in bed, he says, finding it more relaxing than using a phone and the busyness that goes with it. That won’t change, he believes. “But I think it clearly created some cannibalisation – which we knew would occur – but we don’t really spend any time worrying about that, because as long as we cannibalise [ourselves], it’s fine.”

Finally, Cook weighed in on the British government’s controversial Investigatory Powers Bill – which has been dubbed the Snooper’s Charter. This would require tech companies to provide decrypted versions of user communications to the authorities when presented with a warrant. Apple would currently be unable to do so for iMessages or FaceTime, as both employ end-to-end encryption, meaning that Apple doesn’t hold the key.

Any backdoor is a backdoor for everyone. Everybody wants to crack down on terrorists. Everybody wants to be secure. The question is how. Opening a backdoor can have very dire consequences […]

If you halt or weaken encryption, the people that you hurt are not the folks that want to do bad things. It’s the good people. The other people know where to go

Cook added that he was optimistic that the proposed new law will be rejected as both the public and the press are “engaged deeply” in the debate.

Filed under: AAPL Company, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iOS Devices Tagged: Apple TV, Apple watch, Encryption, FaceTime, fitness, Food and Drug Administration, Health, iMessage, iPad Pro, privacy, Security

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Just a week after Plex released its official app for the fourth-generation Apple TV, popular media player VLC has today announced that it is looking for beta testers for its app. Details on the app’s features are still sparse, but we can only assume that it will let you play all sorts of media formats on the device.

The VLC team originally teased its tvOS app back in September, offering up very few details other than confirmation that it was in fact coming. On iOS, VLC allows playback of a variety of different file formats. Files can be played from services like Dropbox, iCloud Drive, iTunes, GDrive, and more. It’s likely that the tvOS client will support many, if not all, of the same services as its iOS and Mac companions, making it a powerhouse of an app for media junkies.

VLC, like Plex, never released an app for Apple TV prior to the launch of the tvOS App Store. Plex on the fourth-gen Apple TV, released last week, allows the streaming of files from a local media server, as well as from channels like Ted, Revision3, YouTube, and Vimeo. Plex, while free download, is only fully functioning if you have a Plex Pass subscription. It’s unclear at this point if VLC will be free or paid.

If you want to signup to be a beta tester of the tvOS VLC app, head to this form and fill it out. The official release to the tvOS App Store is likely not far off either…

Filed under: Apple TV, Apps Tagged: Apple TV, Apps, streaming, VLC

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Popular movie ticket service Fandango has today updated its iOS with a highly requested feature. Bumping the app to version 7.1, Fandango for iOS has added support for Apple’s mobile payment solution, Apple Pay.

Fandango’s Apple Pay integration works just the same as it does with other third-party. When you go to purchase a ticket, you can now choose Apple Pay as a checkout option, significantly expediting the process.

Fandango’s addition of Apple Pay comes just a week after the iOS App Store added a new Shopping category to showcase apps like Fandango. Fandango’s support for Apple Pay has been a long time coming. Apple and Fandango have seemingly had a solid relationship thus far. Fandango powers database powers Siri’s support for movie times and reviews, so it’s odd that it took so long for the app itself to support Apple Pay. Fandango was also one of the first companies to release an Apple Watch app.

Fandango version 7.1 with Apple Pay support is available now on the App Store for free.

Filed under: Apps, iOS Tagged: Apple, Apps, Fandango, iOS, update

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Ahead of the device’s availability on Wednesday, Apple today has shared the first video advertisement for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. In a video entitled “A Great Big Universe” shared on its YouTube channel, Apple shows of the benefits of the device’s larger form factor, as well as apps that are optimized for it.

The ad is heavily focused on the galaxy and using the iPad Pro to explore it with apps like Sky Guide Pro and Star Walk. Apple also shows off the Split-screen multitasking capability of the device. “Introducing the biggest iPad ever,” is how Apple wraps up the ad.

There’s a great big universe in the new iPad Pro. It’s the largest iPad ever and takes your creativity and productivity to an epic scale.

iPad Pro goes on sale online this Wednesday and will be available in retail stores later this week. View the new ad below:

Filed under: iOS Devices Tagged: ad, Apple, iPad, iPad Pro, video

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Ahead of her appearance at Bloomberg’s ‘Year Ahead’ business summit tomorrow, Apple’s SVP of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts has today made an appearance at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival in New York City. Ahrendts sat down with Fast Company Editor at Large Rick Tetzei to discuss her role at Apple since joining the company in 2014…

Ahrendts first noted that when she originally joined Apple, she spent the first 6 months on the job visiting the company’s retail locations in 40 markets and listening to the thoughts and opinions of retail employees. Ahrendts said that more than three billion people visit Apple.com’s online store, while 390 million people visit Apple’s retail locations each year. She noted that Jony I’ve designed the Apple Store tables and that they will never change, “no matter what.”

The Apple executive also added some color on the company’s decision to make itself part of social problems, something Tim Cook has done a lot of since he became CEO. Ahrendts pointed out that “Big isn’t good unless big does good,” meaning that if Apple isn’t voicing its opinion on important issues, then it’s not a good thing that the company is so large and powerful.

Ahrendts said that working at Apple allows her to do so much more than working at Burberry. At Burberry, Ahrendts said she was “touching one percent of the one percent,” while at Apple, she can reach a much larger audience and manage a much larger team of employees. Regarding her relationship with employees, Ahrendts said that there’s a “pretty flat organization” and that retail staffers often email her directly with feedback. Likewise, her “3 things in under 3 minutes” videos allow her to quickly connect with her 60k retail employees.

Ahrendts also noted that even part-time employees receive Apple stock because it’s easier and more cost effective to retain and make employees happy than it is to hire new ones. She also noted that Apple measures employee happiness three times per year. The executive said that Apple has an 81 percent retention rate when it comes to retail employees.

Regarding Black Friday, a retail tradition that Apple largely dropped last year, Ahrendts explained that Apple backed away from the annual tradition because “being good to your employees will always be good for business.”

Heading into the future, Ahrendts said Apple is currently halfway done with merging its retail locations with its online operations. Furthermore, China is still a huge market of interest for the company. Ahrendts noted that by 2025, twenty of the world’s top cities will be in China, hence why Apple is investing so much into the country.

Image via Harry McCracken 

Filed under: AAPL Company

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