Apple Inc. (AAPL) has had yet another management shift, making it the third retail executive departure from the company in the past year. According to IFOAppleStore, Apple’s VP of Retail, Jerry McDougal has left the company to spend more time with his family. McDougal has been a part of the company for 12 years, running Apple’s retail marketing, product merchandising, store operations, loss prevention and customer loyalty programs and worked under Apple’s former retail chief, Ron Johnson. Johnson left the company to become CEO of JC Penney to help the company reshape its retail future.

A key player in the birth of Apple’s retail chain and a potential candidate to lead the retail stores has left the company. Jerry McDougal, Vice-President of Retail, said goodbye to his colleagues last Friday, sources say. His departure was explained as not work-related, but rather so he could spend more time with his family.

McDougal was considered as a replacement for Johnson when he left the company for JC Penney and then again for John Browett who left the company late last year, alongside iOS chief Scott Forstall who was ousted from the company because of issues with Maps and Siri, as well as personal issues with other executives. According to AllThingsD, McDougal will be replaced by Apple’s VP of Finance, Jim Bean.

Jim Bean is moving to Retail to help support our store teams. Jim has been at Apple for 15 years and is a great leader who understands our culture and focus on customer service.

Apple expects employees on the campus to dedicate large portions of their daily time and lives to the company, and recently has been placing the duties of departing executives on other vice presidents at the company. Ultimately, Apple is restructuring the management team that once operated under former CEO and Chairman, Steve Jobs.

{Via MacRumors}

Apple has changed a lot under new CEO Tim Cook, who took over after Steve Jobs stepped down and became chairman of the board. Following the passing of Jobs in late 2011, Tim Cook is trying to take the company in his own direction. This began with the removal of key employees at Apple such as the removal of Scott Forstall as SVP of iOS Software and the resignation of John Browett, head of retail operations.

Now, Apple is offering a new program, allowing some of its employees to take two week breaks from work for side projects that they may be working on, as it might benefit the company somehow in the future.

Apple’s culture is getting to be a little bit more like Google, and other Silicon Valley companies, says Jessica Lessin at the Wall Street Journal. Speaking on today’s News Hub video show, Lessin reports Apple started a program earlier this year called “Blue Sky” that lets employees take two weeks to work on projects outside their normal responsibilities.

Apple is implementing an idea that Google has already had for a number of years, however, Apple’s is much more limited and includes only a select group of employees. By doing this, Apple is hoping that the personal time will fuel innovation and ideas that wouldn’t come to fruition otherwise. By giving employees to enjoy their time and dabble in their own personal projects, Apple is allowing its employees to enjoy their jobs and bringing new ideas into the workplace.

{via iMore}

Apple often airs ads for its products during major award shows and sports events, and continued the tradition during the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony by airing a series of 3 ads. However, these ads were not for the popular iPhone 4S, or the Siri personal assistant, but for Apple’s Genius Bar services.

The first ad, “Mayday” shows an Apple Genius aboard a plane, wearing his classic blue shirt when he gets approached by a frantic flight attendant who tells him that a passenger needs help editing an iMovie project. The Genius rushes over and helps the passenger in time for landing, and then runs over to another passenger who has trouble editing a keynote.

Following the release of “Mayday”, which aired at the beginning of the ceremony, Apple went ahead and aired “Labor Day”. In this ad, the Genius’ neighbor knocks on his door late at night to tell him that his wife has gone into labor, but veers off topic and begins to discuss iPhoto projects, Letterpress cards, and photo books. The Genius quickly describes some of the features of iPhoto and then says, “And we can talk about all of that, on the way to the hospital”.

At the end of the Olympic Game opening, Apple aired the third Genius Bar ad, called “Basically”. The ad showed the same Genius in the two previous ads standing at a food cart, when he is approached by a man who claims to have “basically” purchased a Mac.

The Genius begins to question the man and asks if his new “Mac” has iPhoto, iMovie, or Garageband and comes to realization that the computer he purchased was fake. Like all of the other Genius ads, Apple highlights some of the great features and applications only found on the Mac and ends the ad with the classic Apple logo, with the word “Mac” next to it.

These latest string of ads are very different than anything Apple has ever aired before, and does not focus on any specific feature. The ad instead focuses on the knowledge of the Mac and Apple services by Genius Bar employees.

{via Apple}

We recently reported that Apple Inc. (AAPL) was opening their new Barcelona Retail Store on Saturday at 10:00AM. The wall outside of the Passeig de Gràcia store consists of Gaudi-influenced design, with iOS icons arranged to resemble the modernista style of the popular Catalan architect. On Thursday, Cult of Mac was given access to take photos of the interior of the Passeig de Gràcia store.

Although the initial photographs of the exterior hinted at a very artistic interior, it now appears that the design is unchanged from Apple’s other retail locations and uses the same typical stone, wood, and metal designs. This latest location in Barcelona has a grand three floor structure, consisting of a full fledged theatre, a range of product displays, as well as a large Genius Bar.

On the ground floor of the Barcelona Apple Store, about half of the available floor space is taken up with iPhone and iPad displays, spread across twelve tables in three rows. The other half of the floor is taken up by various models of MacBooks, with only a single table devoted to iMacs.

Higher up, the glass staircase leads to the Genius Bar, as well as an in-house theater.

In the basement is where Mac and iOS accessories are stored, which Apple retail employees are now hard at work filling the shelves.

Apple’s Passeig de Gràcia location is the company’s second store in Barcelona and eighth and most recent retail store in Spain and opens at 10:00AM on Saturday, July 28th.

{via MacRumors — Image Credit: Cult of Mac}

Apple’s Retail stores are a window of the company to its customers, and a large part of the store’s atmosphere are the Genius’ and the Genius Bar. The efficient setup allows employees to easily help customers and form an orderly process to address issues that customers face with their products.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Best Buy is now changing the design of their Geek Squad Solutions Center to operate similarly to a Genius Bar, with customers sitting in front of a wood table and employees addressing their issues face to face as opposed to taking the device and repairing it behind closed doors.

The company is currently testing a prototype store in Richfield, Minn., with the new Solutions Central table. The prototype stores also allow customers to buy products from employees walking around the store with a device to ring up the sale, similar to Apple’s current checkout process.

Best Buy interim chief executive, Mike Mikan called the newly designed stores, “Best Buy 2.0”. Best Buy, with this new design is attempting to make customers the focal point of the store which it hasn’t really enforced in the past as opposed to stocking as many products as possible.

Best Buy stocks numerous Apple products, including the iPod, iPhone, and iPad as well as MacBooks and sells almost as many devices as Apple does in their own stores. Best Buy’s Apple-like design will attract more customers and surround them with enough knowledge to make a purchase in-store, and not just use the brick and mortar location to test the product and then purchase online. Best Buy has not yet announced when the design will begin to be implemented, but will likely do it if it receives a positive response from the prototype stores.

{via AppleInsider}

A civil suit against Google, Apple, and many other tech giants originally introduced more than 5 years ago, may continue to further processing. U.S District Judge has ruled that the case has grounds to continue because “they still have an antitrust claim” according to Bloomberg.

[Judge] Koh didn’t take issue with the allegations about the agreements between individual companies, Joseph Saveri, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an interview after the hearing. Instead, Koh has questions about “how it ties together,” or claims of an over-arching conspiracy between all the companies, he said.

The five year old case, according to the lawsuit, emerged and is still running strong on the grounds that “no solicitation” agreements appeared in 2005 between Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar. These agreements prevented companies from contacting employees at other companies in order to steal or “poach” that particular employee for their own company’s benefit.

However, the agreement still allows employees to apply for other positions on their own. The Justice Department investigated the agreements in 2010 and eventually came to an agreement, with companies assuring that none of the company’s would enter into a no-solicitation agreements for five years. This new civil-suit is a class-action civil suit filed by employees who suggested that they were harmed by anti-competitive actions of defendant companies.

There are no dates or times as to when the case will resume in court or when action will be taken against the companies, however, this case brings to light the risks of tech giants attempting to poach employees.

{via Mac Rumors}

Reports about the treatment of workers at Apple Inc. (AAPL) Supplier factories in other countries surfaced on Thursday, revealing that the companies ignored many issues with their workers, many cases which led to suicide in a Foxconn factory. On Friday, AAPL CEO Tim Cook responded to the reports, suggesting that Apple takes any and all employee issues seriously and is now investigating and addressing any issues or concerns. 9to5Mac reported Tim Cook’s reponse on Apple’s efforts to oversee compliance with company standards for workers’ rights.

As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.

Cook also goes on to thank employees who are focusing and helping with these issues and that Apple is taking this very seriously and will continue to increase its efforts.

We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word.

The New York Times has also gathered statements from Chinese readers, who suggest that this issue is not specific to Apple and is rather a widespread issue, which should be addressed with governmental regulations. This issue appears to be very prevalent in manufacturing factories, such as Apple’s Foxconn supplier and many other companies who outsource manufacturing.

{via Mac Rumors}

DigiTimes has revealed that 3 Foxconn employees accused of leaking iPad 2 designs have now been arrested by local police, according to a Chinese-language sznews.com report. The trio are being held responsible for the leaks that saw third-party companies release protective cases for the second-generation tablet before it was even announced by Apple.

As you may remember, the cases were big news for tech blogs when they were discovered, as they revealed several of the iPad 2’s new features. Touch Reviews brought you several reports on cases that revealed numerous features such as its shape, redesigned speaker, front- and rear-facing cameras, and more. Foxconn suspected that case manufacturers were privy to information from its factory, and as a result reported its concerns to the local police.

On December 26th, 2010, three employees with the Foxconn factory based in Shenzhen, China, were suspected of leaking the design, and were subsequently charged for violating the company’s trade secrets on March 23rd, 2011. Though the report makes no mention of Apple, I’m sure the Cupertino company were pushing for Foxconn to investigate the design leaks for its then unreleased product.

These arrests will be come as a warning to other Foxconn factory workers who may be tempted to leak secret information for monetary bribes. While it may be a tempting prospect for a Chinese factory worker on a less than modest wage, it won’t be taken lightly.