Filed under: Humor, Retail, Odds and ends
Apple's 5th avenue store elevator gets stuck
Not all visitors of the NYC 5th Avenue Apple Store are having the retail experience of their lives, as one group of customers were trapped in the glass elevator for 45 minutes. Ultimately, the hydraulic lines had to be leaked in order to lower the elevator down to the store where the NYPD had to pry the doors open. Store employees who were looking for a fix before the boys in blue arrived were able to lower water bottles down into the elevator.I wonder if this is what happens when you leave the Apple Store without purchasing anything?
[via UNEASYsilence. Thanks also to everyone who sent this in!]

![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)


Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Yuri Walkiw said 5:41PM on 5-29-2006
The elevator was probably made by Microsoft.
Reply
Evan Hindra said 5:44PM on 5-29-2006
is it a Rev A. elevator?
Reply
tiuk said 5:49PM on 5-29-2006
Man, the Apple haters are going to be all over this.
Reply
David Chartier said 5:56PM on 5-29-2006
#2: Then it should make the process of knowing who to weed out of a conversation that much easier; if people are going to make so big of a deal out of a silly issue like this as to discount an entire company because of it... how intelligent, useful (in a conversation) or rational do you think they can really be?
Reply
Duke Nukem said 6:02PM on 5-29-2006
There'll be a firmware update soon, but the customers had to have an extended warranty out on their Apple® Feet Pro 1.0.
Reply
maxim said 6:02PM on 5-29-2006
Am I the only junky that got confused by those last few lines in the end of the article mentioning a "fix" and something about a water bottle.
lol
Reply
Radu Dutzan said 6:09PM on 5-29-2006
Turns out Elevator.app was running under Rosetta emulation, since when the original store was designed, which was around March 2005, it was built around a dual PPC G5, and then the Intel transition was unthinkable. They (eventually) replaced the processor for the final release, but didn't have time (or may as well have forgotten to) recomplie Elevator.app to be a Unversal Binary. Of course the man in charge of this is now fired and on the next Cube Store Security Update there will be a point update to Elevator.app, making it a UniBin and considerably faster. It will also automatically serve water when it crashes, so the employees don't have to bother.
Reply
FritzLaurel said 6:12PM on 5-29-2006
Is it just me or does that look like Jobs in the pic on the right w/ his back to the camera?
#1 - Nicely done!
#5 - lol. I agree. Although, if the employees were getting a fix off the water, wouldn't they be drinking it instead of lowing it into the elevator? Or, were those trapped in the elevator actually employees? Or, were the employees getting a fix from the lowering of the water?
Cheers,
FL
Reply
Matt P said 6:38PM on 5-29-2006
It was probably an issue with the thermal grease.
Reply
Alex Marchuk said 6:53PM on 5-29-2006
I can't beleive no one mentioned the part were it says "I wonder if this is what happens when you leave the Apple Store without purchasing anything?" because that really made me laugh.
Reply
Zoli said 7:14PM on 5-29-2006
I was in that elevator a couple of times and I agree that it is pretty crappy, it takes an hour to finally close the door and open it and going up and down also takes forever!
_Zoli
Reply
maxim said 7:41PM on 5-29-2006
#7 part deux
To me it sounded as if the employees wanted to do a fix before the cops showed up. After doing their fix, they hid the water bottles in the elevator by lowering it there.
So to conclude what drugs they were doing my educated guess was crack .... NY favorite. See they made water pipes from the water bottles and the cops whould recognize those bottle ... hence they had to be hid!
=)
Reply
John S. said 9:18PM on 5-29-2006
All I can think of is what they might have offered the people who got stuck, to get them to sign a release. New MacBooks?
Reply
byondbyond said 10:00PM on 5-29-2006
does anybody care besides macusers in NY if the elevator in a store in NY work. i'm sorry i know it's a slow news day but please..keep up the quality
thx
D
Reply
Mac Diva said 10:27PM on 5-29-2006
Actually, there's a legal angle that interests me in this entry, by. It seems Apple has not paid sufficient attention to building functionality in that store. That's something I've wondered about. Emergency exits, flashing lights, sprinkler systems, etc., are 'ugly.' We know that Steve Jobs is an extremist when it comes to anything that is Apple be as elegant as possible. I wonder if there might be problems if there is a greater emergency in an Apple Store requiring quick evacuation of a large number of people.
Elevators get stuck rather often. Still, Apple should have a contract with a repair company that provides 24-hour service and not have to rely on the police.
Reply
Lee said 10:33PM on 5-29-2006
-#12
I believe that this is a very relevant story. If you don't want to read it, then, are you ready for this, you can SKIP IT. Is it really that hard? If you don't like the story, and you think that it's a waste of your time, think about this: you just wasted another 5 mintues posting about a story that you didn't enjoy in the first place.
Where's the logic in that?
Reply
Camille Brown said 10:44PM on 5-29-2006
We visisted the store yesteday 5/26/06 and had to CARRY our 22 month old daughter who was fast asleep up and down. It was worth it though...it was awesome, I wish my daughter could have seen it...
Reply
Bob the Pirate said 11:10PM on 5-29-2006
#13 glass doesn't catch on fire... therfore eliminating the need for those pesky alarms and sprinklers....
Reply
Reid Bode said 11:52PM on 5-29-2006
No, the glass won't burn.
It'll melt, and no one will be able to get out.
Reply
Zoli said 12:02AM on 5-30-2006
I heard the macbook pros can start a really good hot fire goin' strong and keep it goin with all that juice. iMacs are also pretty good for firewood, i mean ifiremacs
Reply