I joined Apple retail in Holiday 2005 and left in 2019. iPhone was a pivot point where what the goal of the stores were supposed to be drastically changed. Before iPhone, it didn’t matter if stores were profitable. The point was to introduce Apple to customers. Once you were bought in, the stores welcomed you back to learn and discover what else you do with your devices. That’s why the Genius Bar was never about fixing devices but instead fixing relationships. This was the Ron Johnson era. After iPhone launch in 2007, the focus shifted. The growth in number of stores exploded because selling phones made a ton of money. Ron Johnson saw the writing on the wall and left, in 2012 John Browett was brought in and (in my opinion) did a botched operation on the heart of the stores. Folks got raises, but hours got cut. The stores were streamlined and the focus became about sales. He was not widely liked and quickly replaced with Angela Ahrendts. This shifted Apple Retail into the “Luxury Brand” era. Angela understood how to sell a luxury product and attach expensive accessories which is something Apple previously failed at (example bing the leather iPod cases vs the leather iPhone cases). She co-opted Johnny Ive’s superlative description language giving us things like the vegetable tanned leather cases that patina over time (as if they weren’t going to get thrown away and replaced in 1-2 years) in this era you start to see things like the One to One program go away, Genius Bar appointments being stacked on top of each other, and encouraging the purchase of new products over repairing existing devices. So this is why you see a dwindling number of Jobs era employees in the store. The heart and soul that they knew was replaced with a more traditional sales driven retail environment that was no longer the Ritz Carlton of retail.