Apple's "Clean Design" Is Stupidity When It Comes to Hiding Fire Extinguishers

https://www.gadgetreview.com/apples-clean-design-is-stupidity-when-it-comes-to-hiding-fire-extinguishers

59•josephcsible•2h ago

Comments

java-man•2h ago

They need to add a touchscreen and menu to access the fire extinguisher, probably with auto-subscription. Then all will be well.

benoau•1h ago

Confirmation dialog pops up on your iPhone, you allow it, it sends you a code to enter.

OsrsNeedsf2P•1h ago

No no. IPhone will "just work". Only Android needs the code to enter

bradknowles•2h ago

That looks like a picture taken from a mall, outside of an Apple Store.

So, let’s not blame Apple here. Let’s blame the mall for doing something really stupid.

blatherard•2h ago

No, that's the interior of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, the one that's a glass cube on top.

In case you disagree compare https://www.apple.com/cf/newsroom/2019/09/apple-fifth-avenue...

AlotOfReading•2h ago

I wonder if this could have been made trivially compliant by using a transparent window with a sticker, like they do for AED machines.

exmadscientist•36m ago

It doesn't even have to be transparent! (I think.) Big red "FIRE" letters and either a visible handle to open or very obvious instructions would probably be acceptable.

flowerlad•1h ago

Let’s face it, the flat UI is stupidity when it comes to anything. This is not an issue exclusive to fire extinguishers.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design/

usef-•1h ago

Maybe I'm misremembering, but do most luxury stores have fire extinguishers visible to customers (as opposed to staff)? I don't remember seeing them

jldugger•39m ago

I don't recall Coach bags catching fire[1] though.

[1]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/01/09/iphone-battery-fi...

walrus01•37m ago

I wonder if fire safety code (either in NYC, NY State, or nationally) has caught up with some sort of specific regulation for additional fire safety when you have N amount of watt-hours of lithium ion battery storage contained in X amount of square feet of retail space with Y type of fire suppression/detection systems. The same general concept as why you can't take above a 99Wh battery on an airplane as an individual unit, but extended to something like the Apple Store or the laptop display section in a Best Buy.

The closest thing I've seen is a big push from the NYC government to get people to stop charging their sketchy ebike/scooter battery packs indoors in hallways and apartments, which has caused more than a few fires.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=nyc+ebike...

usef-•11m ago

They don't use fire extinguishers for lithium battery fires though (as the article mentioned: submerging it in special sand). It would possibly be a negative if a member of the public grabbed a visible extinguisher during a battery fire?

And I'm surprised that the reports seem to be from eight years ago, given the amount of old electronics that go through the stores

colmmacc•1h ago

The "Steve Jobs" movie features a made-up subplot about Jobs insisting that the Fire Exit Safety signs be turned off to achieve "absolute blackout" in a theater. They very reasonably point out that no fire Marshall would approve it. I'm surprised for that reason, especially in midtown Manhattan. I've seen a fire marshall do a full inspection of a Broadway show and they were very thorough. This store is just a few blocks from there.

827a•25m ago

I think this is everything right about Apple. There is zero chance the building is not up to code, at least within the context of some exception granted to them by the city. Their extremely numerous number of employees are likely well trained on what to do during a fire, including where the extinguishers are. I can think of no stores I'd rather be in, if there's a fire, than that Apple Store. But, it makes nerds angry; they're more interested in the process than the outcomes.

yellow_lead•23m ago

> I can think of no stores I'd rather be in, if there's a fire, than that Apple Store.

How about a fire extinguisher store?

dtagames•20m ago

Or anywhere without so many lithium batteries.

bigyabai•18m ago

This is correct. I actually visit Apple stores because the conduct of their employees reinforces the culture of voluntary safety that I've come to expect from society. Exposing these gaudy red extinguishers only causes customers to feel unsafe and resent safety instead of accepting it. Anyone that wants to display even a single extinguisher is obsessing over their own insecurities and tearing down the safety ecosystem we trust our lives with. Blatant nerd quackery.

When I can see the extinguishers in the store, that's when I'll know Apple has finally gone downhill. If you're reading this Ternus, don't stop fighting.

dannyw•7m ago

I agree there’s zero chance of written documentation that the building isn’t up to code.

That’s very different to it actually complying with code however. And to your second example, if I was physically attending WWDC back when they did they keynotes, I’d much rather seeing illuminated exit signs than having them (illegally) turn them off in case of a fire.

Much of building codes is either outdated, no longer the most effective way to achieve something, etc. But these building codes are written in blood. It’s why we have them.

no-name-here•17m ago

Weird writing:

1. “Reportedly, an Apple retail or office installation has been circulating” - but they then include a tweet as their apparent source that explicitly says it’s the 5th Ave store. So why say it might be an Apple office instead?

2. Maybe they are so wishy-washy about it because they aren’t confident it’s real, but if that’s the case, then writing a lengthy article calling something “stupidity” that you can’t even confidently state occurred…

3. “Reportedly, an Apple retail or office installation has been circulating” has a hyperlink across multiple words so you’d think it would be their source, but no it’s to the Apple homepage.

dannyw•15m ago

It’s a LLM generated article, and from the sentence style, I think a GPT. It looks like it’s been put through a “humaniser” or had less copy editing.

Just about all of gadgetreview.com is LLM writing these days.

Gigachad•12m ago

This article is just a popular tweet that has been converted in to an ad filled article. Probably all done by AI.

For all we know even the original video from the tweet is ai generated.

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Comments

We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything

Bob Cringely Has Died

Treachery in the Rodin Museum 3D scan verdict

Hole Punch: Sling your spaceship around gravitational fields

The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux

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Kolibri: A Sovereign Open-Weight Model

Math's pedagogical curse – Grant Sanderson [video]

Getting the most out of Opus 5.5 in Claude and Claude Code

Your body of work thinks back at you

Show HN: Thoreau BASIC – What if BASIC hadn't gone out of fashion?

FTL: A new operating system for clouds

New York City should carefully measure a new tree

Three AI agents, two countries, and one uneven world wide web

Surely you have ultra-wideband radios on your bins too?

Agents don't need memory, they need documentation

Show HN: Pi pod – Run your pi coding agent in sandboxes on your own server

Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'

Docker has always used microVMs (well since 2016)

Woking Electrical Control Room (2016)

Memory-Safe WebP Decoding

RetailReady (YC W24) Is Hiring

RSS Feed Best Practices (2022)

Apple's "Clean Design" Is Stupidity When It Comes to Hiding Fire Extinguishers

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C++ Insights – See your source code with the eyes of a Compiler