In this week’s Sunday Reboot, a London Apple Store gives hope for the future of the company’s mall locations.
Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get next week underway with a good first step.
An Apple Store near the UK HQ
On Monday, I found myself getting up hours earlier than normal and getting on a train to London for an appointment. While I could easily complain about the travel (three delayed trains and the London Underground is astoundingly noisy), one column-worthy thing did occur on that day away from the keyboard.
I had some hours free before my trip back across the UK, and I was close enough to Battersea Power Station to pay a visit. Battersea Power Station is actually Apple’s UK headquarters, which was used to display Christmas trees designed on an iPad on its towers last year.
Obviously, there’s no chance of me going into Apple’s offices there for a tour, but there is also an Apple Store.
Battersea Power Station’s main space is now a massive retail emporium, where you can pay big brands big money for expensive things. Basically, it’s now a mall inside a very iconic London location.
Outside Apple Battersea. It’s like a fishbowl.
We have discussed the store in the past, including its launch in 2023. However, in AppleInsider’s ongoing campaign to visit every store possible and to comment on it, this was an opportunity I had to take.
Apple exists on the ground floor in one of the larger spaces, opposite Ralph Lauren and Lacoste, near to Ray-Ban and Nike. It has a nice mostly-glass frontage, interrupted by structural frames around the panes and a large Apple logo in the middle.
This is fairly pedestrian, until you go onside and are greeted by the famous tables. There are lot of them, and this is also typical of the Apple retail experience.
However, this isn’t quite the usual mall grey-everywhere generic mall fit-out you’d see in most places. This was an almost completely wood-clad store.
Looking down Apple Battersea. So much wood.
All of the side avenues were there, except there wasn’t the usual massive video wall that gets used for Today at Apple sessions or events. There was a lit poster near the door, a smaller and more conventional television for showing Apple TV in one corner, but no video wall at all.
There was a nice alcove in one corner that is used to host Apple Vision Pro sessions. It was a nice break-out area, with seating on the sides and a central table showcasing the very-expensive headset.
Looking upward the lights were masked slightly by a drop ceiling, consisting of lots of vertical slats, running the entire length of the room. It certainly made the room feel longer than the sizable space truly occupied, and it was a nice touch.
The Apple Battersea Genius Bar, with the dual-height counters.
Of particular note is the Genius Bar, which takes up space at the back left corner. There are two avenue spaces for this, with a pair of wooden counters at different heights, as well as stools and lower seating.
As far as stores go, this was a pretty good one. Sure, it’s not as fancy as Apple Champs-Elysees in Paris, nor the museum-like Apple Via Del Corso in Rome, but it was still quite a step up from the other mall-style outlets I’ve ever run into.
A long-time hint to the future
I wish more Apple Stores took this warmer approach. If a story from last week is right, we may well see something similar.
Last weekend, Apple’s store refurbishment plans were said to concentrate on renovations more than opening up new locations around the world. This included a revamp of the Avenue, the removal of the video wall idea, and changes to the Genius Bar.
Those changes would involve replacing them with all-wood elements, consisting of two counter heights. Behind would be storage drawers and large product posters.
The alcove where you play with the Apple Vision Pro at Apple Battersea.
At the time, it dawned on us that the description matched an existing store that we had also saw. The reopening of the Tysons Corner store in 2023 showed this style of bar and other changes outlined in that report.
These same changes are also evident in the Battersea Power Station store. And again, that was opened in 2023 too.
The refurbishment report added that Apple had tested new layouts in a number of stores internationally. It makes sense for the “local” store to the UK HQ to be among that list.
This is hopefully a good sign to store-goers on what they may see their nearby Apple Store turning into in the coming years.
I really hope that this happens in the UK soon. I don’t fancy another six-hour train ride to experience this again anytime soon.
Last week’s Sunday Reboot discussed the Apple Event and the first Ternus presentation.
