Filed under: Retail, Internet Tools
Apple upgrading online Concierge reservation system
It looks as though Apple's Concierge, their online system allowing for Genius Bar reservations, is undergoing a bit of an upgrade. There wasn't much warning, and we don't have any details of what shiny new goodies are going to debut, but it was an already pretty slick system that is bound to get even better if they're making this big of a deal out of it. Stay tuned.
[Upate: Someone (no, literally: "someone") in our comments pointed out that Apple has already rolled out this shiny upgrade to some of their retail stores, and you can already access it at the San Francisco's store site. Looks like a handy new system.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
someone said 11:16PM on 9-19-2006
"concierge 2.0" as its known, has already been rolled out at select stores, notably ginza, the new mcarthur center, and san francisco. going to the reservation page for the Sf store takes you to the new interface: http://concierge.apple.com/store/R075
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univac said 12:50AM on 9-20-2006
Maybe it will work now.
Every time in the last year I've tried to sign up time for a client, it always says that due to overwhelming demand there are no times available.
Huh?
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Tyler said 1:30AM on 9-20-2006
Of course, this won't do anything about having to log on at 4am to make sure you get an appointment. Sorry, but the appointment system at the Apple stores is in my opinion a pretty crappy way of doing things, especially since you can't register in advance unless you pay another few hundred dollars for Double Secret AppleCare...Give me a break.
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Connor Stuart said 1:36AM on 9-20-2006
"Double Secret AppleCare"??? WTF is that? If you're referring to ProCare, that's $99 a year which isn't bad since an Apple consultant will come to your home but charge you almost $100 AN HOUR for each visit. If the Apple stores didn't have an appointment system, it would be chaos. You should think before posting.
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Jason Philo said 2:27AM on 9-20-2006
I just checked it out and it's quite nice. The most noteable difference is that it is much faster—no spinning gears while you wait. The layout is more organized and it includes an optional comments section. Very nice.
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John Pastor said 2:59AM on 9-20-2006
Most noticeably it does not use Flash like the last iteration. It now utilizes AJAX.
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Alec Feld said 7:26AM on 9-20-2006
The SoHo store has had this for a week now.
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Alex Hillman said 7:35AM on 9-20-2006
Ajax? Where?
This is flat HTML. Pages post back. the time slot picker utilizes some javascript, but it's hardly ajax.
From flash -> flat HTML. Some would say a step forward, others, a step back. From a company with so much polish on their UI, a flat HTML tool like this is fairly disappointing :-(.
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John from Buffalo said 8:00AM on 9-20-2006
Ya, that's news.
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Someone said 6:28PM on 10-02-2006
This is far from flat html. It is WebObjects, the crown jewel of web application servers. And it is using Ajax, in a very small, but important way. Think before you type.
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