4 ms·

>The award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. For small ticket items, you can

>The award for the most asinine thing about the Apple Store is their insistence on not having a proper area to pay for things. For small ticket items, you can scan, pay and leave without needing to interact with the staff. >Thanks to the Apple Store app, you can use your iPhone to scan the barcode of an accessory off the shelf and use Apple Pay to pay for it. From there, you can just walk out of the store with your new Apple accessory in hand. https://www.howtogeek.com/338754/how-to-buy-stuff-at-the-apple-store-without-a-cashier/ https://www.howtogeek.com/338754/how-to-buy-stuff-at-the-app...

village-idiot 8y ago
The fact that there's a "how to" article for buying things at a store is a sign that the UX is a complete and miserable failure.
CaptainZapp 8y ago
Well, yeah, thank you+) very much, I guess. So same as with self scanning tills at supermarkets I'm now expected to do the work for one of the most profitable companies in the world, since they can't be bothered to have a proper checkout or hire enough people. +) Not you, personally, obviously. edit: reformat
- dorfsmay 8y ago
  "same as with self scanning tills at supermarkets" Worse! You have to first buy the device and use their own payment apps. That's an expensive way to just feel cool/modern!
- tikkabhuna 8y ago
  Huh? Self checkouts are great! Rather than having 1 or 2 tills you can have many times that manned by the same number of people. If you don't have any alcohol you can use it without interacting with anyone at all and its much faster. That coupled with contactless payments make it super quick to buy just a few items. A "proper" checkout is still king for large shops but for people I know (late 20s), that is becoming less common for more frequent, smaller shopping trips. Edit: I should say this is for someone based in London.
  - CaptainZapp 8y ago
    Let's just say that - and that goes especially for the UK [I'm looking at you: Boots!] - self checkout tills and me seem to be in a perpetual war. Herearound at least you scan your crap and pay. In the UK there's some shitty weight system, which I don't get and the system accuses me after every third item of being a thief and instructs me to call assistance (which cannot be found since, well, self checkout tills). Look, if you want me to do your work then, at the very minimum, trust me not to cheat or kindly fuck off! The worst experience I've ever had was in a Tesco in London were the completely rude security dude claimed that there's only self checkout. My friend wanted a pack of cigarettes. Good luck getting that from a self checkout till.
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      My second-favorite self-checkout peeve is when I go to Target (+grocery) and want to buy two or three things for lunch, one of which is an apple--a Fuji apple, which I have memorized as produce #4131. The apple has to be weighed, so it goes on the scale. But the scanning lasers also go across the scale plate. If the scanning laser manages to read the little bar code on the produce sticker before I manually type in the number on it, the whole self-checkout station immediately panics and calls for a store employee to unlock it. Every. Time. This problem has existed for years. I now trigger it on purpose whenever I'm not in a rush. There's no excuse whatsoever for a self-checkout system to grind to a halt when reading a bar code that legitimately appears somewhere in the store.
  - bobbiechen 8y ago
    >If you don't have any alcohol you can use it without interacting with anyone at all and its much faster. I agree that you can do it without interacting with anyone at all. But I question whether it's faster. For a class assignment on usability a while back, I observed self-checkout users and manned ("proper") checkout at a local grocery store and found that the absolute fastest of the self-checkout users were only just as fast (per item) as the average manned checkout user (among 24 users). A few factors increase the speed of manned transactions. First, cashiers are familiar with common produce numbers, avoiding the need to search for stickers or slowly look up the number of a particular item. Second, a cashier can begin bagging items as the user pays by credit card or pulls out cash, so some of the work is done in parallel. Third, sometimes manned checkouts have a person dedicated to bagging, which reduces the time even further (though all times recorded for this project are single cashiers without baggers). Self-checkouts definitely feel nicer for me (except when the anti-theft "place item in bagging area" nagging starts). But now, when I'm in a hurry, I'll make a beeline for a register with a cashier instead of the self-checkout.
- phailhaus 8y ago
  I mean, it's objectively more convenient and faster. No waiting in line.
atonse 8y ago
I have the app. It works really well if you are an Apple nerd like me. But not everyone does. Judging by the number of people that wander around, this is clearly a solution that sounded good at Apple's Silicon Valley offices but breaks down doesn't work in the real world. This is not an area that needed innovation for innovation sake. Just have a sign and employee assigned so you can go to them and pay for stuff.
- xvector 8y ago
  You can literally talk to any employee if you want to buy something, and they'll whip out their Square-equipped iPhone/iPad. There doesn't need to be a dedicated employee for sales. Just ask one of the employees roaming around the stores.
  - wan23 8y ago
    If you can find one who isn't busy.
pdimitar 8y ago
Apple Pay still isn't supported in most of the world, sadly. I'd kill to be able to just use it for all my payments but so far most of Eastern Europe is of no interest to Apple, it seems. (Despite the really big following they have around here.)
stephenhuey 8y ago
I'm a developer who switched to Macbooks in 2006 and I go into the Apple Store at least a couple times per year (the last time was weeks ago), and I have never noticed that was possible. Seems like a failure to market this option. I know it might hurt the aesthetic they're going for, but if they're overwhelmed even with legions of store employees, they might as well have signs trumpeting this to move people along more quickly.
benjohnson 8y ago
>>For small ticket items, you can scan, pay and leave This would make me very uncomfortable - without the ceremony of payment it would appear to others that I'm stealing.

village-idiot 8y ago

The fact that there's a "how to" article for buying things at a store is a sign that the UX is a complete and miserable failure.

CaptainZapp 8y ago

Well, yeah, thank you+) very much, I guess. So same as with self scanning tills at supermarkets I'm now expected to do the work for one of the most profitable companies in the world, since they can't be bothered to have a proper checkout or hire enough people. +) Not you, personally, obviously. edit: reformat

dorfsmay 8y ago
"same as with self scanning tills at supermarkets" Worse! You have to first buy the device and use their own payment apps. That's an expensive way to just feel cool/modern!
tikkabhuna 8y ago
Huh? Self checkouts are great! Rather than having 1 or 2 tills you can have many times that manned by the same number of people. If you don't have any alcohol you can use it without interacting with anyone at all and its much faster. That coupled with contactless payments make it super quick to buy just a few items. A "proper" checkout is still king for large shops but for people I know (late 20s), that is becoming less common for more frequent, smaller shopping trips. Edit: I should say this is for someone based in London.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  Let's just say that - and that goes especially for the UK [I'm looking at you: Boots!] - self checkout tills and me seem to be in a perpetual war. Herearound at least you scan your crap and pay. In the UK there's some shitty weight system, which I don't get and the system accuses me after every third item of being a thief and instructs me to call assistance (which cannot be found since, well, self checkout tills). Look, if you want me to do your work then, at the very minimum, trust me not to cheat or kindly fuck off! The worst experience I've ever had was in a Tesco in London were the completely rude security dude claimed that there's only self checkout. My friend wanted a pack of cigarettes. Good luck getting that from a self checkout till.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    My second-favorite self-checkout peeve is when I go to Target (+grocery) and want to buy two or three things for lunch, one of which is an apple--a Fuji apple, which I have memorized as produce #4131. The apple has to be weighed, so it goes on the scale. But the scanning lasers also go across the scale plate. If the scanning laser manages to read the little bar code on the produce sticker before I manually type in the number on it, the whole self-checkout station immediately panics and calls for a store employee to unlock it. Every. Time. This problem has existed for years. I now trigger it on purpose whenever I'm not in a rush. There's no excuse whatsoever for a self-checkout system to grind to a halt when reading a bar code that legitimately appears somewhere in the store.
- bobbiechen 8y ago
  >If you don't have any alcohol you can use it without interacting with anyone at all and its much faster. I agree that you can do it without interacting with anyone at all. But I question whether it's faster. For a class assignment on usability a while back, I observed self-checkout users and manned ("proper") checkout at a local grocery store and found that the absolute fastest of the self-checkout users were only just as fast (per item) as the average manned checkout user (among 24 users). A few factors increase the speed of manned transactions. First, cashiers are familiar with common produce numbers, avoiding the need to search for stickers or slowly look up the number of a particular item. Second, a cashier can begin bagging items as the user pays by credit card or pulls out cash, so some of the work is done in parallel. Third, sometimes manned checkouts have a person dedicated to bagging, which reduces the time even further (though all times recorded for this project are single cashiers without baggers). Self-checkouts definitely feel nicer for me (except when the anti-theft "place item in bagging area" nagging starts). But now, when I'm in a hurry, I'll make a beeline for a register with a cashier instead of the self-checkout.
phailhaus 8y ago
I mean, it's objectively more convenient and faster. No waiting in line.

atonse 8y ago

I have the app. It works really well if you are an Apple nerd like me. But not everyone does. Judging by the number of people that wander around, this is clearly a solution that sounded good at Apple's Silicon Valley offices but breaks down doesn't work in the real world. This is not an area that needed innovation for innovation sake. Just have a sign and employee assigned so you can go to them and pay for stuff.

xvector 8y ago
You can literally talk to any employee if you want to buy something, and they'll whip out their Square-equipped iPhone/iPad. There doesn't need to be a dedicated employee for sales. Just ask one of the employees roaming around the stores.
- wan23 8y ago
  If you can find one who isn't busy.

pdimitar 8y ago

Apple Pay still isn't supported in most of the world, sadly. I'd kill to be able to just use it for all my payments but so far most of Eastern Europe is of no interest to Apple, it seems. (Despite the really big following they have around here.)

stephenhuey 8y ago

I'm a developer who switched to Macbooks in 2006 and I go into the Apple Store at least a couple times per year (the last time was weeks ago), and I have never noticed that was possible. Seems like a failure to market this option. I know it might hurt the aesthetic they're going for, but if they're overwhelmed even with legions of store employees, they might as well have signs trumpeting this to move people along more quickly.

benjohnson 8y ago

>>For small ticket items, you can scan, pay and leave This would make me very uncomfortable - without the ceremony of payment it would appear to others that I'm stealing.