Apple’s New Store Design Replaces the Genius Bar With the Genius Grove

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Apple's new flagship San Francisco store opens this Saturday, and The Verge took a tour of what is clearly the Apple store of the future. The new store features a gigantic video screen (rumored to cost $1.5 million) and 42-foot sliding glass doors that can open to the street. But maybe the most interesting thing is the very low-tech change to the Genius Bar, which now has a whole new name.

Photo: The Verge

Apple's been adding plants and natural elements to its stores for the past year, but now the company's announcing that live trees are a crucial part of its plan for the Genius Bar, home to Apple's expert technicians and shoppers panicking about their pricy busted Apple products.

"The Genius Bar also got an upgrade; it’s now become the 'Genius Grove,'" writes Women's Wear Daily. "Live ficus trees are meant to inspire peace, an antidote to the frustration of broken gadgets."

Meanwhile, CNBC explains it this way: "Experts will help customers with product issues 'under the comfortable canopy of local trees.'"

Yeah, a tree canopy is totally going to calm down all the irate Apple shoppers who are freaking out about their Macbooks that spontaneously go dead or the iPhones they dropped in the toilet. Those ficus plants will make all the difference, I'm sure.

Just gaze upon this ficus tree. Don't you feel calmer already?

Photo: Kateryna Larina/Shutterstock