Apple stores ban Facebook access? Not really
This MacBook at the 14th St. Apple Store in New York could load Facebook just fine. Taken, naturally, on my iPhone.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)NEW YORK--It involved three shopping districts, two subway lines, and a whole lot of walking in the freezing cold. But I completed my mission to hit up all three Manhattan Apple stores to see if it was true that the retail outlets' computer stations had blocked access to Facebook because too many people were using the popular social network to waste time. (Editors' note: at publish time, the link above was experiencing a network time-out error.)
The verdict: An Apple Store representative told me in a phone call later on Friday, "We have not blocked Facebook from our stores." But it looks like some stores may have put a block in place on their own accord.
Apple retail stores are famously stocked with Internet-accessible workstations that, while intended to be used as demonstrations for prospective buyers, are also free for the public to use. That's led to some problems with nonshoppers monopolizing the machines and taking up space: in mid-2007, Apple blocked access to MySpace, which was then the world's biggest social-networking site.
I hit up Apple's Fifth Avenue flagship store in midtown (you know, the big glass cube), the 14th Street store in the Meatpacking District, and the store on Prince Street in the downtown neighborhood of SoHo.
At the Fifth Avenue store, I was able to access Facebook from one laptop, but on another, the facebook.com domain redirected to an Apple Store page. In the Meatpacking District store, meanwhile, two laptops loaded Facebook without a problem, but a desktop computer brought up a message explaining that the parental controls feature in the Safari browser had blocked it.
In the SoHo store, meanwhile, I had no problem accessing Facebook from any of the random computers I checked out. Ironically, it was in the SoHo store that was populated by the most people who clearly weren't customers; by the time I swung by, it was lunch hour at a local high school, and the computers were occupied by teenagers checking out games and music.
So, what it looks like is that even if there is no nationwide ban of Facebook at Apple stores as some had speculated, a few individual stores have chosen to go their own route.
This post was updated at 1:05 p.m. PT with comment from Apple.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Gees, you'd think it was a library or something important.
And to think, someone actually wasted their time visiting the stores to check it out, and then some editor actually PAID for this story!
I could come up with a better story just scratching my rear, wonder if they'd pay for that?
At the Apple 5th Avenue store, there are people who spend the entire day hogging the Macs while shoppers like myself are unable to use it to see which products I might have been interested in.
Apple has clearly lost sales, THAT I can assure you of.
Too many times I was in the mood to check out software, but without testing it out, I walked out.
Actually I did not.
The huge crowds at the Apple retail stores alone is daunting enough.
But the ones who hog the systems are usually busy doing their Facebook/Myspace/Youtube/Banking/Video ripping right in the store.
Apple has an interesting strategy because their sales are pretty much recession-proof.
Rarely a sale and usually packed, that's a winning combination.
Rarely a sale and usually packed, that's a winning combination."
So you are saying that sales are recession proof, meaning people are buying Apple products, but there is rarely a sale?
Apple Stores have an average annual per square sales of $4000. - far above most other retail outlets. Hardly a "rarely a sale" situation...
Must be that some of those Mac "hoggers" were actually serious buyers.. unlike yourself.
Gotta love it
Doesn't make sense for them to block Facebook, now that Apple uses them in iLife '09 to allow easy posting of photos to Facebook from iPhoto, and let your Facebook friends know that your iWeb page has been posted.
I'm sure some employees want to demo posting Facebook photos to certaIn one to one customers and during iPhoto workshops.
PS: The author should have waited until this weekend, beautiful weather in the NY Tri-State area compared the past couple days.
- by jinx101a February 7, 2009 12:35 PM PST
- This is just another example of Apple's heavy handed controlling attitude. I'm not surprised.
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