Apple doesn't want you in its stores in case you're carrying coronavirus

Apple Store Seoul
Apple Store Seoul (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple has put several measures in place.
  • It hopes to prevent the spreading of coronavirus.
  • It's limiting the number of people who can enter its stores.

Apple has put several measures in place in an attempt to try and prevent the spreading of coronavirus. It's starting to limit Genius Bar appointments in an attempt to cut down on the number of people in its stores, but it's also taking things further, too.

According to a new AppleInsider report, Apple has started to restrict the number of people who enter its stores as a whole. And those who are in the store are not being encouraged to hang around. Apple has long tried to make Apple Stores a gathering place of sorts, so this move is very much against usual policy.

According to multiple sources speaking to AppleInsider, Apple will be operating its stores "below capacity," limiting the number of customers who can enter a store at any time. By restricting the number of customers, this will in theory keep the density of customers down in stores, reducing the chance of contact and virus spread.To encourage customers to avoid loitering and to reduce the number of surfaces that may come into contact with the virus, Apple has also instructed stores to cut down the amount of seating for customers by half. Store employees are instructed to keep at least one meter away from each other, as well as from the customers.

The new measures went into effect yesterday – to different degrees – at Apple Stores across the globe. It's also possible that Apple will decide to limit store opening hours in some countries, as it did in China.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.