[throwaway290]

Uh, what? You mean the actual Apple Stores (which are only available in select countries) are not run by Apple? That would be new.

If you mean various third party resellers then of course, it's just a run of the mill shop that happens to sell Apple products, a completely different experience.

[p_l]

These are licensed shops that serve as effectively local Apple Store (as they are primary contact with Apple for majority of clientele) and then completely 3rd party stores which do not carry Apple branding.

[throwaway290]

Authorized resellers aren't your "contact with Apple", you can simply buy genuine apple products there. Authorized repair centers can do repair and have access to genuine parts. That's all it is.

Apple Store is a totally different shebang, if those are not owned by Apple it would be a major news story for lots of people.

And if they are owned by apple I don't see why their employees can not see bug reports.

[fragmede]

If you are familiar with Apple, you may have heard about their obsession with secrecy. If you haven't, they are obsessive about secrecy. Apple store employees don't get unrestricted access to Radar, their bug tracker, because they don't want their secrets getting out. The text in a bug could accidentally hint at a new feature on there next iphone, and Apple can't have that happening.

[solarkraft]

> Authorized resellers aren't your "contact with Apple", you can simply buy genuine apple products there. Authorized repair centers can do repair and have access to genuine parts. That's all it is.

The last time I dared to request a troubleshooting for the terrible lockups (sometimes down to the touchpad click not responding directly) that I now believe are caused by swapping (and are present on every ARM Mac I've used), I was offered by the official Apple website to make an appointment at Gravis, an authorized reseller and then perhaps also authorized repair provider.

[throwaway290]

Apple does direct you there. But the key is that people there are third parties. They have some arrangement with Apple and access to genuine parts but they are not Apple and they don't put you in touch with anybody at Apple.

But Apple Store I think is owned by Apple and people there actually work at Apple. Also if Apple Store was the same franchise thing as authorized resellers then I don't see why there would be so few Apple Stores around the world.

Also wow. I didn't have this particular touchpad issue with my M1 mac yet. I do have a bunch of gripes with Apple about other issues though. Just a couple days ago noticed notification center was using 100% CPU and draining battery. Only because I wanted to check time in another timezone using world clock widget. Trying to edit the widget and select a different city locked up the entire thing with all the other widgets. Dumpster fire.

[p_l]

As far as general population is involved, "iSpot" in Poland are "apple stores".

Even if what happens is that they are just a favoured franchise.

[throwaway290]

It's not about genpop, someone here on HN said that Apple Store employees might have access to radar and someone else here on HN claimed that Apple Stores are not owned by Apple. We should know what is an apple store and what is a random shop that paid Apple for logo rights;)