Apple bans ‘time sucking’ Facebook in stores

appleApple blocked MySpace a couple of years ago for the same reason. Unfortunately, people are treating it like an Internet cafe, so I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube ends up on the list too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into my local Apple store and found a pack of kids watching stupid videos on one of the computers.

Apple started blocking access to MySpace from its retail stores a couple years ago, when customers accessing the site started taking away time from the other 2,248 customers per day (on average) that walk through the door. Now, the new popular social networking site Facebook has earned the dubious honor of becoming such a time-suck that Apple now blocks it from its display machines. According to an Apple Store employee we spoke to, access to Facebook has actually been blocked for about a month. “It’s just trying to find a balance between letting people try out the computers, but not tying them up so others can try them as well,” he told Ars. He noted that there are a few other sites that Apple blocks, but there is no official list outside of Apple’s IT staff. – From ars technica

It involved three shopping districts, two subway lines, and a whole lot of walking in the freezing cold. But I completed my mission to hit up all three Manhattan Apple stores to see if it was true that the retail outlets’ computer stations had blocked access to Facebook because too many people were using the popular social network to waste time. (Editors’ note: at publish time, the link above was experiencing a network time-out error.) – From CNET

Move along Facebook fans, Apple is tired of you bogarting its devices and bandwidth at its stores. Apple is reportedly adding Facebook to the list of Web sites that visitors can’t access while testing out devices in its retail stores. Neither Apple nor Facebook would confirm rumors that are circling on the Web, first reported on TinyComb.com. The report quoted one store employee as saying,”Apple stores have become a regular Internet Cafe, so placing the most popular time-killer [Facebook] of them all on the banned list will certainly help everyone get a chance to test out the computers.” – From Channel Web