The solution comes in three flavors: 100% Natural, Triple Strength (which also disinfects), and a deep cleaning gel. The bigger packages include a 240 mL bottle to keep at home or the office and a 60 mL bottle (small enough to get through TSA screening) to carry with you. They also include a cloth with a heavy nap good for picking up dust and dirt. The Deep Cleaning gel comes with a smaller, chamois-style cloth.

I started with the Triple Strength solution and cleaned up my screens with a couple spritzes. It features a non-drip formula that’s safe to spray directly on your screen, but old habits die hard, and I still sprayed the solution on to the cloth, wiped it on the screen, and then used the dry side to finish. The results were impressive, but nothing I wasn’t used to with other cleaners.

The real surprise was that after a day or two of use, there was a noticeable difference. I had far less dust on my MacBook Pro screen and far fewer fingerprints on my iPhone compared to usual. I definitely noticed that my iPhone was still looking great after two days. Sure enough, I went back to the packaging and found that the Antec cleaning solution is anti-static and fingerprint resistant. Color me impressed.

The 100% Natural solution has the same anti-static and fingerprint resistant qualities, but forgoes the chemical additives that add non-drip and disinfectant properties to the Triple Strength variety. Both types are available in a few different combo packages, some of which include wipes in individual travel packets.

I found all the above Antec cleaners at Newegg.com at a pretty good discount off retail too. So not only does this stuff work really nice and keep my screen clean for longer than with the competition’s products, it’s actually cheaper too. Love it.

Disclaimer: Antec provided the products for review.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?
• A clouded view of Google Music

Credit: ifoAppleStore.com

As Apple has added to its collection of retail stores around the world, it has also been upping the ante on the stores’ design and architectural flourishes, from the 5th Avenue “cube” store in New York City to the Shanghai store with the clear glass cylinder.

Apple is getting even fancier for its proposed new flagship store in Aix en Provence, France, set to open in late 2012 or early 2013: It is doing away with walls almost entirely and going for an all-glass structure (as seen in the rendering above), with the exception of a rear wall for offices and inventory. IfoAppleStore.com reports that the glass will be “enabled by new technology developed by Apple’s glass suppliers.”

The newest store is clearly an eye-popping and accurate expression of Apple as a company in one way: It shows its love of and appreciation for design. But the design analogy of almost total transparency? Not so much.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet 2012: companies and technologies set to disrupt
• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015
• LTE changes everything; LTE changes nothing

Beyond the mind-boggling number of people that show up for store-related events like this such as the first day of sales for iPhones or iPads, it’s always rather amazing to see the sheer number of employees on hand. The red shirts in the picture taken at the opening on Friday are the employees. And fittingly, on Friday, Horace Dediu at Asymco put together a chart that details how much all those employees make for Apple.

Credit: Fortune/PED

The data has been pulled together by ifoAppleStore, but the calculations are Dediu’s. They show Apple Store revenues over the past decade they’ve been open for business, which helps us more easily visualize some interesting take-aways about how much each Apple Store employee brings in for the company.

Credit: Asymco

So far, through three quarters of 2011, Apple Stores have made $14 billion in revenue and $3.1 billion in profit on 358 stores (not including the just-opened Grand Central Terminal venue) with something north of 30,000 employees.

The chart shows that while the amount of revenue the stores are making in 2011 per visitor has gone up in the last year, the average revenue brought in by each employee has gone down.

According to Dediu, Apple retail outlets last year brought in revenue of $481,000 per employee, but that number has dipped in 2011 to $320,000, but again, it’s not including the last — and likely most important — quarter when holiday shopping gets done.

Meanwhile, he has calculated that the revenue that comes on average when a person steps into an Apple Store is $45, based on the quarter of a billion visitors the stores see every year.

It’s clear it’s not that Apple is making less money in its stores. But it appears Apple is diluting the revenue per employee by opening more stores and hiring more people.

Either way, it’s clear Apple has this retail game down. It may have lost the head architect of its physical stores strategy in Ron Johnson (who left recently to become CEO of JC Penney), but it’s still making improvements, with the EasyCheckout method of purchasing products via an iOS device in store and the new option to pick up online orders in stores shows. And in the other telling sign, after a decade, people will still show up in throngs just to be the first inside a new store.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• What Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft

Due to reconfiguration of store displays and staff, Fortt says Apple can actually better supervise the door and make sure people walking out with items legitimately should be. Plus, it keeps staff free for the more important tasks of doing product demos and helping shoppers who haven’t already made up their minds about what to purchase.

Fortt’s source, someone “familiar with Apple’s retail operation,” says the benefits of the new EasyPay system outweigh the downsides, something which will lead Apple to make it a feature “prominently touted” at Apple’s new Grand Central Terminal store in New York City, which is set to open Dec. 9. If self-checkout really is doing as well as Fortt’s source seems to think it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple made encouraging its use at new location a standard practice, both through staff advocacy and physical layout.

Self-checkout is undoubtedly going to require a lot of initial investment in terms of making sure customers know about it and know how to use it. But if it’s already performing well by Apple’s standards, that’s a very good sign for the future, since as adoption increases it should cut down on Apple’s retail staffing costs and allow for even bigger profit margins for the brick-and-mortar stores.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• What Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft

Apple will pay $60 per square foot for the 23,000 square-foot space. It’s apparently the best lease held among all other retail stores open for business in the transportation center. According to the Post:

Critics likewise note that Apple’s $60-a-square-foot lease is well below what many other tenants are paying — including a future Shake Shack burger joint that will be shelling out more than $200 a square foot, according to the leases, copies of which have been obtained by The Post.

That’s a sign that Apple drove a hard bargain with the MTA — despite the fact that the public agency’s budget squeezes are pushing up fares for subway straphangers and suburban commuters across the region.

Apple will also not be required to share any of its profits with the MTA, which differs with the lease agreements of every other Grand Central tenant with the exception of a Chase bank ATM, according to the report.

To give an idea of how much extra Apple will be able to keep under this arrangement, consider that Apple does about $400 million in sales in its other flagship NYC store on 5th Avenue, which is 10,000 square feet and open 24 hours a day. With the standard arrangement in place to pay a certain amount in proceeds to its landlord for that store, Apple has paid $15 million on that $400 million. The Grand Central store will have more than twice the square footage of the 5th Avenue location.

This is sort of like how wealthy celebrities are the ones constantly being given a bunch of free stuff: Even though they can afford to buy what’s being given away, brands want to give them stuff because the allure of a famous person using your product can bring other benefits to the brand. The MTA is saying it’s happy with the deal, because it will “generate significant new traffic” for other retailers when shoppers wander in to find the Apple Store.

But it’s also yet another way to gauge the kind of power and influence Apple wields in retail. In 10 years Apple stores have gone from being predicted to fail to bringing in more revenue per square foot than any other major retailer, and being the must-have store for major retail complexes.

Image courtesy of Flickr user ceiling

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• What Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft

Apple was second only to Amazon.co.uk, and beat out Argos, which has been at the top of the list along with Amazon’s U.K site since Hitwise began its rankings. In October 2011, the Apple site accounted for 1 in every 25o visits made by U.K. browsers, according to the information gathered by Experian Hitwise.

Part of the reason for the huge volume increase in traffic, which spiked in October, is the death of former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs. Jobs passed away Oct. 5, just a day after Apple announced the iPhone 4S. The combination of the two led to Apple reaching its highest-ever levels of Internet traffic, with 14 million visits coming to the site in October alone.

Hitwise also cited the iPad as another cause of high traffic for Apple, since tablet popularity overall is a growing driver of web traffic. Amazon experienced a lift thanks to its Kindle Fire, for instance, and in addition to its U.K site topping the list, Amazon’s U.S. shopping portal even made the U.K. rankings, coming in ninth.

Apple’s surge in retail web rankings may not last, but a six-place jump is nothing to scoff at, even if it is a temporary boost dictated by extremely unusual circumstances. If Apple dips back down next quarter, it probably won’t fall all the way back, since some of those new visitors will probably stick around to keep tabs on what’s coming next, specifically to look for clues about iPad 3, which is starting to become a popular target for the rumor mill.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Mobile Q3: the fight for OS domination continues
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues

According to Bloomberg, despite Apple’s hiring in August of executive talent search firm Egon Zehnder International, it may instead end up hiring someone internally if an outside search isn’t coming up with any results. An earlier report from Cult of Mac had pegged Apple’s current VP of Retail, Steve Cano, as Johnson’s replacement, but Apple refuted those claims.

Apple said via a spokesperson that its “search is under way with lots of interest,” and noted that the company is “carefully selecting Ron’s successor,” in a statement to Bloomberg. But in the meantime, it’s hardly business as usual for Apple Retail stores.

Just last week, Apple launched its revamped iOS Apple Store application, which provides ship-to-store ordering and EasyPay self-payment options to U.S. Apple retail locations. I argued that this represents another potential revolution sparked by Apple in brick-and-mortar sales, and now there’s a new report circulating that more changes are still to come.

On Saturday, 9t05Mac reported Apple will be making iPads the new wonder tool of the Apple Store Genius Bar, replacing MacBook Pros that have long been in service. Geniuses toting iPads would employ special software to determine if a user’s device was eligible for repair, diagnose problems and even order replacement parts. For Apple, this represents cost-savings; an iPad is much cheaper than a MacBook Pro, after all. But the real benefit will be for customers seeking Genius help, since it’ll make Genius work spaces less cluttered and more comfortable, and keep Geniuses much more mobile.

So despite Apple’s lack of a formal helmsman in place for its retail operations, the ship is sailing quite nicely, and even venturing outside its established routes. Good to see that even with a hugely successful retail model already in place, and in the midst of a highly transitional period, Apple still strives to bring its A-game to an area where it continues to have a steady, albeit les- publicized impact on a global scale.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• What Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft

On Tuesday, BGR reported that Apple will be introducing a new iOS retail store app, and this new app will allow for online ordering with in-store pick up, and also for customer self-checkout for some items. Both would represent major steps toward minimizing or eliminating the hassle of paying for goods at brick-and-mortar retail locations, making for an Apple shopping experience that makes actually buying things almost as painless as window shopping.

A shift more dramatic in concept than in practice

The process for self-checkout seems a little sci-fi as reported by BGR’s sources: Apparently, you’ll scan items using your iOS device’s camera, then click purchase, whereupon your Apple ID (and associated payment method) is charged, after which you can walk out with the product.

But though it seems far-fetched, other companies are already attempting similar things, including PayPal and AisleBuyer. Also, it isn’t too different from the system in place now: Associates often let you leave with product in hand, maybe with a paper receipt but often not, and sometimes with a small sticker indicating you paid. I always feel like I’m getting away with something when I leave an Apple Store even now.

For larger items, you’ll be able to buy in advance, and either pick up the item within 12 minutes if it’s in stock, or have it shipped free to a store if not. Retail locations will also reportedly gain the ability to receive custom-configured Macs shipped to store, which will finally remove one of the biggest barriers tweak-happy consumers like myself encounter when trying to use them. Again, this is a small difference from what’s currently on offer, but could do much to change the perception of Apple retail for consumers who have traditionally avoided storefronts.

Not the first; hasn’t stopped Apple before

Other companies have done ship-to-store before. Best Buy and The Source here in Canada have both offered those options for quite a while now. But as Apple has proven time and time again, the difference between offering something and getting it exactly right can also be the difference between failure and runaway success. In my experience of ship-to-store programs offered by other retailers, I’ve never had the process go entirely smoothly, and service in practice always differed from what was advertised.

If Apple can pull off what this report says it will attempt, it will be bridging the gap between online sales and brick-and-mortar retail in a real and lasting way that should benefit both sides of the business. Customers who once avoided retail sales will use them for the sake of convenience (in-store pickup eliminates the need to be home to receive a package), and retail customers will encounter less frustration with finding an available sales associate or navigating Apple’s sometimes inconvenient distributed checkout system.

Products, not sales, taken to the extreme

Finally, these advances would bring the Apple Store a little more in line with Steve Jobs’ vision of the perfect retail experience. Store space could be given over almost entirely to hands-on product demo and samples, and to Genius Bar tech support and setup assistance.

Apple once revolutionized retail by replacing the focus on sales and inventory with emphasis on product knowledge and sales associates who behave more like tour guides than confidence men cruising for marks. Now, it could do so all over again by taking transactions off of the retail floor altogether, and leaving just products and first-hand experience of the same by curious customers.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• What Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft

The increase was pointed out on Monday by Analyst Maynard Um of UBS in a research note.

A chunk of that new investment will, no surprise, go toward its retail operations. The company will spend $900 million on its stores in 2012, up from $614 million this past year.

Apple Stores have been growing rapidly, particularly outside the U.S., and especially in the greater China region. Apple opened 30 new stores in the  most recent quarter alone, to bring the total to 357. CFO Peter Oppenheimer noted on Apple’s earnings call two weeks ago that the company would be opening 40 new stores in 2012, and “75 percent of those will be outside the U.S.” He also noted that Apple would be “replacing” some of the company’s higher-volume stores here in the U.S.

The rest of the $7.1 billion in extra capital expenditures is listed as “other.” From the 10-K:

The Company anticipates utilizing approximately $8.0 billion for capital expenditures during 2012, including approximately $900 million for retail store facilities and approximately $7.1 billion for product tooling and manufacturing process equipment, and corporate facilities and infrastructure, including information systems hardware, software and enhancements.

So some of the money is going to be spent on building the company’s new “spaceship” headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. and equipment for its manufacturers, but IT systems hardware, software and “enhancements” is almost certainly pointing to the company’s ongoing data center project and, by definition, its cloud infrastructure. (See also Horace Dediu’s examination of the data and how capex can be used to foreshadow iOS device volume production.)

Apple is building out a gigantic data center in North Carolina, and perhaps even a solar farm to power it — if reports are correct. That data center will support its cloud operations, and could increase the capacity and eventually lower costs for the maintenance of Apple’s iCloud service. Apple would never be accused of  jumping on the cloud bandwagon early, but spending billions more underlines the fact that the company has much bigger plans for iCloud.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• Forecast: the evolution of the e-book market

Jony Ive is the driving force behind Apple's new product designs.

Apple has increased its research and development spending from $1.8 to $2.4 billion this year versus last, according to a filing made Wednesday by Apple to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That’s a 33-percent increase, and makes the 2011 total more than half what it spent during the previous four years combined.

That’s a lot of money, but Apple’s year so far has been one of considerably earth-shaking transitions. The introduction of iCloud, its continued beta development and eventual release, can’t have come cheap, and it represents a paradigm shift in the focus of the company, something Steve Jobs conveyed on stage at WWDC in June. There’s also iOS 5 as a whole, which represents the biggest leap forward for iOS since it was first introduced.

Apple is also known to have its product pipeline planned out at least three years in advance. It’s quite possible that special attention was paid to Apple’s next big thing to follow the iPhone and iPad, especially because Jobs’ illness had progressed so much in the past year. Comments from his biography claim that he’d “finally cracked” a dedicated Apple television, which would definitely entail considerable R&D costs.

While in the past Apple has been praised for doing a lot of innovating for relatively little money, a heavy infusion of R&D money at this critical juncture in the company’s history is probably a good sign. Apple needs to wow customers to keep up investor confidence, and money invested in coming up with amazing products is a good way to do that. Also, Apple has a huge pile of cash reserves, so it definitely won’t miss the additional money.

Apple also experienced considerable growth in the area of its global workforce. Apple now employs 63,300 people worldwide, up 28 percent from last year. A lot of those new hires come on the retail side, which accounts for about half of its total employee head count. Apple has planned to open as many as 40 new stores by the end of the year.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

Apple Store opens in Toronto. Credit: Daniel Bader

The iPhone 4S is now officially available for sale at Apple retail stores in the U.S. (east coast), as well as at partner retail stores including Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and Best Buy to name a few. Retail sales began at 8 a.m. Friday morning, but lines formed long before then.

Over 100 had lined up in Japan nearly 11 hours prior to launch in that country, and lines all over the U.S. and Canada now extend beyond 100, too. According to Rob Shoesmith, the dedicated U.K. fan who lined up a full two weeks early to get his hands on an iPhone 4S, there were “thousands” in line for the new phone at the Covent Garden Apple Store in London.

Early rain didn’t dampen the spirits of iPhone 4S buyers at the NYC 5th Ave. store, with around 400 people currently in line, and there were about 100 people waiting at the Eaton Centre Apple Store in Toronto as of around 12 a.m. Friday morning, and there were over 300 people waiting in line in Vancouver as of around 3 a.m. PDT.

Pre-order sales for the iPhone 4S both online through Apple itself and through its carrier partners garnered more than 1 million sales on just day one. Estimates from analysts about the anticipated size of opening weekend sales range from 2 to 3 million for most, with Carl Howe of Yankee Group predicting 4 million. At the very least, it should “easily outpace any previous launch,” as Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf puts it.

For those considering trying to go out and get an iPhone 4S on day one, official Apple retail stores are known to have way more units on hand than partner stores, but as my colleague Kevin Tofel found out earlier this year with the iPad 2, sometimes finding a less frequented affiliate retailer with much less stock on hand actually leads to longer lines, especially in more rural or densely populated areas.

Are you waiting in line, or did you already get your phone? Share your launch day stories in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Social media reactions to the iPhone 4S
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues

The loaner program would allow employees to take a device from a pool of iPads. During the week, employees can do what they like with the device and don’t have to take it back to the store until their time is up, according to the report.

There’s no word on whether the pilot program is a first step before rolling this out across Apple’s retail chain, but that’s a logical assumption, if the pilot program is successful. A lending program for the iPad would help ensure all employees have hands-on familiarity with the iPad and with iOS 5 when it launches, which should be sometime next month.

Apple hasn’t done any lending to retail employees before, but it did actually give away the original iPhone in 2007 to store workers. And retail employees would definitely benefit from more actual experience with the iPad and Apple’s software. It’s a little unfair considering my job, but I often test the knowledge of Apple’s sales staff when I’m visiting a store, and am amazed at how often they either don’t know or are mistaken about a specific device’s capabilities.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015

Even though the app lets you quickly and easily scan barcodes to hunt for better deals on Amazon than might be available from your school bookstore, really, there’s little here that’s necessarily student-specific, besides graphics. In fact, if you’ve used the Amazon Mobile app for iOS, then you’ll probably feel a slight sense of déja vu. As mentioned, both let you can scan barcodes using your device’s camera, as well as search the Amazon.com catalogue, manage your Wish List, view the Amazon daily deals and check out your account or recommendations. Both also let you view your cart and actually make purchases as well.

Unlike the standard Amazon mobile app, Amazon Student lets you quickly and easily access Amazon’s Trade-In program, which lets you sell select used goods using Amazon as the go-between, complete with free shipping. The only catch is that you won’t get cash for your used stuff; instead, Amazon offers up gift cards of varying value, depending on the item you’re selling. So, as you can see from the screenshot, my used copy of Infamous 2 would net me up to $25 in Amazon.com credit.

It’s actually a great feature, and one that makes using the app probably better for a wide selection of Amazon shoppers, not just students. I know I’ve got cabinets filled with unused books, DVDs and video games that aren’t doing me any good here, and since I’ll probably spend the money on Amazon anyway, I might as well get it in gift cards.

Amazon Student also allows users to sign up for a free, six-month Amazon Prime membership, which provides free two-day shipping and release-date delivery for books, video games and other products. This feature really is student-only, however: You need to have an active and valid .edu email address to take advantage of the offer.

Still, thanks to Trade-Ins, Amazon Student is a pretty solid free download, even for non-students.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunities

The WSJ has heard from unnamed sources that executive search firm Egon Zehnder International was selected by Apple because it wants to “consider executives who are based abroad.” The report also says CEO Steve Jobs was “extensively involved” in picking Egon Zehnder.

Apple representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After 10 years as the VP of retail operations for Apple, during which he opened more than 300 Apple Stores, Johnson is set to become the CEO of clothing retailer JC Penney on Nov. 1.

The company’s iconic shops did $9 billion in sales worldwide last year, and that number is likely to go even higher this year. In the most recent quarter, Apple said stores accounted for $3.5 billion in revenue. And the company continues to open additional sites.

In Apple’s most recent earnings call, COO Tim Cook acknowledged that the stores that did the highest average revenue and saw the highest foot traffic were abroad, and more specifically, were in China. The company will continue to add stores outside the U.S., so it’s very reasonable that Apple would look to candidates who have experience in retail markets outside North America.

Thumbnail courtesy of  Flickr user jardenberg

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The rise of tablets in the enterprise
• Why iMessage won’t kill SMS

The new iPad displays are distinct from the iPads on display for customers to try out; their home button doesn’t do anything, and the tablets appear to be running a custom version of iOS software that is specifically designed for the Apple Retail environment. The iPad software displays information for the products they’re next to, including pricing, technical information and features. You can also compare different models from the iPad consoles, check out a section aimed at new Mac users (who continue to be a key target audience for Apple Stores), get support information and also call a specialist to come and help you out.

The presence of the iPads means that instead of static information placards, customers have access to an interactive display featuring tons of useful information regarding the product next to it you’re interested in buying. At the same time, you’re using another Apple product to digest said information. It’s a natural extension of Apple’s hands-on experience retail focus and could lead to more retail sales as people experience the ease of iPad navigation and its responsiveness.

The use of iPads as selling tools is one step closer to providing a retail experience that sells by using the infrastructure of sales, not just marketing and display material and the products themselves. Apple Retail 2.0 is a live case study that other business owners and retailers can observe in action, complete with examples of how Apple hardware and software can work together to change the very nature of your in-store customer relationship.

Apple also introduced a new version of its Apple Store iPhone app, which brings new in-store features, including push alerts telling you when the next Genius Bar appointment is available, and a call button for a customer service representative, so you don’t have to hunt down a blue-shirt yourself. The app also now includes built-to-order customization options for Macs.

All of the changes mirror a trend with Apple in general to move to in-house solutions where possible, and to keep the ecosystem and product interaction tight. But it also acts as a great example for business users and enterprise, where iPads are often used as sales tools. Apple hasn’t traditionally pushed its products very hard on the enterprise sales side, but it’s still making huge gains in that space. And while it may not market to business directly very much, creating a living, breathing proof-of-concept is arguably a much better selling tactic, anyway.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer Q1: The Over-the-Top vs. Pay TV Battle Heats Up
• Mobile Q1: All Eyes on Tablets, T-Mobile and AT&T
• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015

One of the selling points of the original Apple Store was the red “hot line” that the Genius staff could use if they were stumped on a problem. After a time, that phone disappeared.  Turns out, Apple didn’t want customers tying up the bar trying to play stump the genius (a surprisingly amusing pastime). What they actually wanted was for the Genius bar to take care of problems on the spot, and delight the customer with excellent, attentive service.

Over and over, Apple has been willing to change things up, experiment, make adjustments, and even throw away things that don’t work. Here are some other examples of those changes, large and small:

• The Genius Bar originally didn’t have appointments. You just walked in, wrote your name down on a piece of paper, and you were given a pager to tell you when it was your turn. Apple migrated to an electronic waiting list and then implemented appointment times. After the iPhone, the service queue was split up into separate Mac and iPhone/iPod lines.
• The Genius Bar originally did all the product training in the store. Apple later rolled out ProCare with training sessions included, and then split training off from ProCare into One to One. Now One to One is only available for new Mac purchases, and group training has been emphasized.
• Theaters were installed in all stores for product demonstrations and education. Theaters remain in the flagship stores, but the floor space has been given over to the Genius Bar and Creative training areas in smaller stores.
• The Rhonda app on all of the display machines would turn the screen a certain color so that staff would be alerted to a customer waiting for help (Help Me Rhonda. Help, Help Me Rhonda!). This was later dropped.
• Stores were directed to get average repair turnaround times under 2 days. In order to meet the challenge, stores started to keep parts for quick repairs on hand so that they could get some done on the spot.
• The original store layout had several cash drawer stations around the store where customers would queue up to make purchases. EasyPay changed that so all credit card transactions could be handled on the floor. Cash drawers started to disappear and many stores only have one for the occasional check or cash payment. The EasyPay system migrated from a Windows CEapplication running on Symbol hardware to an iPod touch outfitted with a card swipe reader and bar code scanner.
• With the cash drawers gone, stores started posting greeters at the front to direct customers and introduce them to the way things worked. This position was formalized into a special Concierge position. Later the concierge would check you in for your Genius Bar or One to One appointment with an iPod touch or iPad app.
• Apple installed receipt printers under tables throughout the store which meant sales staff could stay closer to the customer. Staff can now request product to be delivered from the back room, so the customer can continue to ask questions or receive help.

After 10 years and billions of dollars in profits, it is easy to look back and think that Apple Retail was an inevitable success. But Apple has had its finger on the pulse of consumer desire for all that time, and the ability to identify changes in that pulse and adapt quickly is a quality that should help Apple continue to succeed in the coming decade as well.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Structure 50: The Top 50 Cloud Innovators
• Connected Consumer Q1: The Over-the-Top vs. Pay TV Battle Heats Up
• Smart Grid Apps: Six Trends That Will Shape Grid Evolution