Apple Store - page 30

A protest involving around 50 people blocked customers from entering the main doors of Apple’s flagship San Francisco Union Square retail store yesterday.

The protest was related to service employees claiming to be underpaid. Organized by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), they staged a sit-in for nearly an hour. While the Apple Store remained opened during this time, customers had to enter through a side door.

One of the protestors, describing himself as an Apple security guard, decried the firm for its lack of job protection. “If [security officers] miss a day of work, they don’t know if they’ll have the job the next day,” he told Business Insider.

Apple still hasn’t opened an official store in the Middle East, but its about to make a huge retail splash by building its largest store ever amid the futuristic skyscrapers of Dubai.
Job listings posted to Apple’s career’s site last week indicated that Apple is interested in pursuing retail operations inside the UAE, but according to EdgarDaily, the company isn’t looking to build just a regular store in Dubai.

Apple finalized its $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics just a few weeks ago, but for those looking give their earbuds a taste of Beats, the Online Apple Store is making the over-priced cans a little bit cheaper.

Apple doesn’t have an official retail presence in the Middle East… yet. Recent job listings spotted by ifoAppleStore indicate that the company is looking to open at least one store in the United Arab Emirates by next year.

Tim Cook has led Apple into the front of the LGBT-rights movement with company appearances at Gay Pride parades and Wall Street Journal op-eds demanding equal rights for gay workers, but according to one Apple Store customer in Portland, some of Cook’s employee don’t share his enthusiasm for inclusion.

Adam Catanzarite, who self-identifies as queer, has taken to social media after an Apple specialist printed off his receipt for a set of EarPods with a not-so-subtle homophobic slur tossed in the spot reserved for his email addresses.

Take a look:

How valuable is it to have an Apple Store in your property portfolio? Pretty valuable indeed, as it (unsurprisingly) turns out.

That’s the point proven by the Third Street Promenade Apple Store in Southern California, which has just sold to new real estate buyers for a record-breaking $100 million: making it the per-square-foot record holder for commercial real estate in the entire West Los Angeles area.

Apple added a new Beats by Dre section to its online store that makes it quicker than ever for shoppers to locate Tim Cook’s new favorite headphone brand among the mountain of iPhone and iPad accessories.

The Apple Store on New York’s Fifth Ave has become nearly as iconic as the other shiny glass and aluminum beauties it sells, and now Microsoft is ready to take on Apple in the Big Apple with a Fifth Ave store of its very own.

Microsoft is in negotiations to open its first ever NYC store on Fifth Ave, reports the Daily News, which says the new shop will go up a mere six blocks away from Apple’s famous store.

Apple fanboys with a sense of humor and few hundred bucks to spare can own a piece of the thermonuclear history between Apple and Samsung, by throwing down on an eBay auction by the guy who had the worst name for an Apple Store specialist ever.

Apple is set to open its new Dutch brick-and-mortar retail store this Saturday, according to ifoAppleStore.

This will be the third Apple Store to open in the Netherlands, with previous retail outfits opening in Amsterdam and Haarlem. The store will be located in Den Haag (The Hague), which is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but an important city since it is the seat of the Dutch government and parliament, the Supreme Court, and the Council of State.

Apple is set to open its second brick-and-mortar retail store in Turkey, according to Turkish website ElmaDergisi.

The store is allegedly planned to open this fall, around the same time as Apple’s long-awaited iPhone 6 is set to hit shelves. It will be located in Istanbul’s upmarket Akasya Shopping Center, a shopping mall known for its major brand stores.

Apple today officially welcomed Beats Music and Beats Electronics to its family, along with Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, following its $3 billion takeover back in May.

“Music has always held a special place in our hearts, and we’re thrilled to join forces with a group of people who love it as much as we do,” reads an announcement on Apple.com, while those buying products from the Beats website will now be routed through the Apple Store.

Apple is set to open a new Apple Store in Toledo, OH’s Franklin Park Mall sometime during the fourth quarter of 2014. This will be Ohio’s eighth Apple Store, with its seventh opening last month in Dayton.

The company has already posted 15 job openings via its website, while it recently advertised a full-time retail general manager post via the website CareerBuilder.com.

Most Apple Store thieves we’ve seen prefer to go with the classic smash and grab technique, but according to federal court charges, one fraudster in Florida broke his Apple heist into 42 separate scams by using a simple but major flaw in Apple’s credit card processing system to plunder $309,768 worth of products from Apple’s retail locations.

One of the best things Apple offers for newbie customers is the ability to go into brick-and-mortar retail stores for training sessions.

Looking to improve this service — or at least to speed up the ability for users to make the appropriate reservations — Apple has made changes to its “Learn” webpage, adding an interactive map of its stores along with revised session details.

The changes also integrate workshops such as Youth Programs and One to One training into the existing Concierge reservation system.

Apple is set to open a new brick-and-mortar retail store at the Paradise Walk mall in China’s Jiangbei District of Chongqing, according to Apple’s official retail website.

The store will open at 10am local time on Saturday, July 26, and will represent the company’s eleventh Apple Store in China: the first of several that will be opening in 2014 and 2015.

Apple is set to open its third brick-and-mortar retail store in Western Australia, at the Lakeside Joondalup shopping mall in Joondalup, Perth.

The 5,000 square-foot location will be part of a major revamp of the shopping center, that will see it become the largest in Western Australia.

The location doesn’t come as a total surprise: almost two years ago Apple real estates scouts were seen walking in the hallmarks of the mall, although it’s only with the mall’s current renovation and expansion that Apple has found a location suitable to lease.

Remember back in the early 2000s when Apple opening a brick-and-mortar store in prime real estate locations seemed as crazy a gamble as Apple deciding to create its own mobile phone? Very few people would admit so now — particularly Apple’s rivals like Samsung and Microsoft which have followed the Apple Store example with their own surprisingly similar retail outfits.

In an attempt to stop others from copying the slick, high fashion minimalism of its Apple Stores, Apple has secured a court ruling allowing it to register the layout of its retail stores in the European Union as a trade mark — extending the intellectual property status that it already carries in the U.S.

Apple expanded its enormous retail empire this weekend with the grand opening of its new Puerta del Sol store that let its first customers through the crystal clear glass doors Saturday June, 21st in Madrid, Spain.

Customers lined up early Saturday morning to be among the first customers to enter Apple’s newest sanctuary, with some reports claiming nearly 600 queued up before opening hours to see the second largest Apple Store in Europe.

Apple is on a price-slashing spree this morning after taking down its online store for a few hours last night. Not only did Cupertino just release a cheaper low-end iMac, but it’s also dropping prices on the Apple TV and Mac mini across the UK and Europe.

Apple has multiple new stores planned to open over the second half of 2014 and first quarter of 2015. Among these is one planned for Marlborough, Mass, as revealed through job postings listed by Apple over the past 10 days.

Up until now, however, the store’s future location hasn’t been known. Fortunately a tipster has pointed out the exact location where the retail outlet — Apple’s 11th in the state — will be set to open.

SVP of Retail Angela Ahrendts made her first official public appearance as an Apple executive at the Friday opening of Apple’s tony new store in Tokyo, Japan.

Ahrendts posed for photos with fans who had turned up to see the opening of the upscale Omotesando Apple Store. Other Apple execs at the event included Retail Real Estate and Development Vice President Bob Bridger, Worldwide Apple Retail International sales VP Steve Cano and Online Stores VPs Jennifer Bailey and Bob Kupbens.

Apple stores are iconic throughout the world for the level of design that goes into their construction. In fact, it’s almost like they’re Apple products themselves.

Today Apple posted a video to its YouTube channel showcasing the preparation for its new store in the Omotesando area of Tokyo, Japan. With giant glass panes stretching stories-high, it’s a big store in a country that Apple is doing very well in right now.

Everyone is talking about vast open world hacker game Watch Dogs since its release earlier this week, and that means one inevitable thing: it was only going to be so long before the parodies started rolling in.

This Machinima.com parody of the game imagines a scenario in which Watch Dogs‘ main protagonist is forced to ditch his smartphone — which allows him to hack into various electronic devices tied to the city’s central operating system — for an iPhone. For most people, switching to iPhone is a definite upgrade. For Watch Dogs’ Aiden Pearce, however, it’s a less clear-cut decision.

We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.