It’s hard to believe, given how many Apple Stores are constantly opening their doors, but Apple’s only got official retail presence in 13 countries. That’s nothing: a mere 6% of the world. Chances are, then, that unless you live in America or Western Europe, you don’t have easy access to an Apple Store.
Luckily, that’s a problem Apple’s looking to change, one country at a time. Next country on the list set to be transformed by the Apple retail experience? Good old Mother Russia.
David Beckham is one of the greatest soccer players of all-time. I think. To be honest I’m not really sure, because I’m American and we don’t really watch “futbol” all that often, but I hear he’s great and I know he’s famous, so he’s gotta be good, right?
Not only is the dude super famous, he’s also super duper hot. Like, David Beckham is so stinking sexually attractive that silver statues of him in his glorious underwear are erected in his honor. And one just so happens to be outside the Apple Store on 5th Ave in NYC for some reason.
Here’s what the statue looks like from the front:
Every time you drop by your local Apple Store it’s probably crazy busy. Even when they haven’t launched a new product in months, the floors are always packed with people. Apple just opened its 374th and 375th retail stores this weekend in Canada.
While he was up in Canada, Jim Dalyrmple talked to Apple about the success of their retail operation and came away with some interesting statistics – like the fact that the genius bar services about 50,000 people a day, for over 18 million appointments a year.
The new iPhone will be released in September and already we’ve seen a couple carriers and retailers drop the price on the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS below the standard contract price.
Apple’s website is still selling at the standard prices, but according to some informers, Apple Store employees have now been authorized to price match discounts from other retail locations.
Since the beginning of the 2012 London Olympics last month, Apple has been giving away a rotating set of 4 Great Britain-themed lapel pins each day. This isn’t a new thing for Apple, as the company gave out similar Canadian-themed pins during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
For the Olympics this year, the pins are tiny black and white iPhones and iPads. Cult of Mac reader Andrew Wingert sent in some shots of Apple’s full pin set.
The Geniuses at your local Apple Store are used to dealing with a wide assortment of complaints and problems. Broken harddrive, cracked iPhone screen, kidnapped woman? They can handle it all.
A few nights ago a kidnapped woman from Kentucky was forced to walk into an Apple store with her kidnapper who was trying to force her to purchase a bunch of Apple products with her credit cards. But thanks to an alert Apple Store employee, the woman was rescued and her kidnapper is now in the slammer.
Want a Retina MacBook Pro? Want to spend gobs more money on it? Apple has just expanded the build-to-order options for their most powerful notebook, allowing you to jack up the CPU to up to a 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor, or even upgrade the SSD to up to 768GB of flash. Now the most expensive Retina MacBook Pro you can buy is a whopping $3,749.00!
Update: We originally misunderstood the nature of these new build-to-order options. It is only the 2.3GHz Retina MacBook Pro that has recently gotten the option to upgrade to up to 768GB of flash storage; previously, Retina Display MacBook Pros with a faster processor were the only ones capable of being upgraded in this manner. We’re sorry about the confusion. Either way, it now looks like Apple has pulled these build-to-order options from their online store.
In 2012, there’s nothing that lends prestige, luxury and credibility to a shopping space like an Apple Store. From that perspective, it’s the Tiffany’s or Sak’s of the 21st Century.
In fact, it looks as if the Apple Store was considered to be such a prestigious draw that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority bent over backwards to make sure it could get Apple to lease a space in the famous Grand Central Terminal… at the expense of other applicants.
After months of construction work on the old Banco Espanol de Credito building on Passeig de Gracia, Apple has today taken the wraps off of its new flagship retail store in Barcelona, Spain. Cult of Mac has exclusive first pics from the scene.
According to a new survey from Appcelerator, a mobile analytics and development company, developers for mobile platforms are moving to the enterprise market. When asked to choose one mobile operating system is best for the enterprise market in this year’s survey, the majority picked iOS (53 percent) over Android (38 percent). This is in marked contrast to last year’s survey, in which the platforms tied at 44 percent.
When Ron Johnson left Target to become Apple’s Retail Chief in 2000, people thought he was absolutely nuts. Apple was in danger of going out of business, and other PC manufacturers like Gateway were closing their retail locations. Johnson ignored all the warning signs because he says he saw that Apple was about to be a huge part of the digital revolution. He also recognized that Apple offered consumers something other companies couldn’t – amazing products and an incredible retail experience.
In a recent interview at Fortune Conferences, Johnson explained why customers choose to come to the Apple store to buy their products when they could get them on Amazon or Best Buy for a lot cheaper:
In a new visual for the Apple Store website, Apple has posted a “We’ll be back” note for potential web visitors. What’s news about that? Well, there are 18 different languages that rotate through, each (assumedly) saying the same thing. We’re assuming this is regular maintenance for the site, but will keep an eye on things just in case.
It’s a nice international touch, and in keeping with Apple’s continuing success worldwide. Click on through to see if you can figure out all the languages – feel free to share in the comments below.
What does it take to work at the Apple Store besides a love of all-things-Apple and a willingness to work for a low hourly wage? Three things: great customer service, true grit and the ability to tell Steve Jobs himself that he’s being a total idiot.
According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, Best Buy is prototyping a new retail store experience that borrows heavily from the Apple Store. Unlike the traditional retail layout of cluttered displays and long checkout lines, Best Buy is testing a more open environment that allows customers to pay at multiple locations in the store.
Also borrowing from Apple’s strategy, the whole retail experience focuses more on connecting customers with Best Buy employees to help answer questions about products. The test store is located near Best Buy’s headquarters in Richfield, Minnesota.
If you thought your Lego construction skills were formidable, check out what H.K. Leung has built: a Lego replica of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, complete with see-through spiral staircase and glass cube on top. It’s incredible.
If you’ve ever thought it would be a whole lot of fun to visit Apple’s Cupertino campus, let us assure you that there’s really not all the much you can do there. Sure, you can walk around Infinite Loop like a creepy stalker hoping to spot Jony Ive or Tim Cook, but you probably won’t. The one thing you can do, though, is visit The Company Store on campus and buy a t-shirt or other souvenirs.
Apple makes great phones and computers, but their apparel line leaves a bit to be desired. Here are all the shirts that you can buy from The Company Store when you visit Apple’s campus.
The East Alton school district in southwest Illinois announced earlier this week that it will be launching a one-ton-one iPad deployment for all students in grades three through eight (plus shared iPads for kindergarten through second grade). The announcement is far from unique. Many schools across the U.S. and throughout the world have already launched similar programs – some of them on a much larger scale.
One of the interesting points about East Alton’s decision, however, is that the school district isn’t buying the iPads for its students – a least not initially. Instead, the district has signed a four-year leasing agreement for the iPads. The decision highlights Apple’s often overlooked leasing programs for both business education customers.
Earlier today, we reported that Siri had leaked Apple’s plans to open up a new retail store in the Broadway shopping center in Sydney, Australia. It seems, however, that it wasn’t such a big secret after all, because the Cupertino company has already begun work on the new outlet, as these images sent into Cult of Mac prove.
Any Apple fan would love to know what goes on behind the scenes at their local Apple store, but unfortunately the company’s obsession with secrecy means the only way to do that is to get a job there. It seems like a great place to work; after all, who wouldn’t want to play with Apple devices all day and then tell people why they’re so great?
But did you know that on their days off, every Apple staffer has to workout rigorously to ensure they are strong enough to carry the store’s cash from the tills to the vault? This is just one of the secret rules every retail employee must follow each day. Thanks to the Joy of Tech, we can take a glimpse at some more of them.
Rumors suggesting a new Apple retail store is coming to Sydney, Australia, have been circulating for some time now, but the Cupertino company has been keeping any plans close to its chest. It seems, however, that someone forgot to tell Siri to keep quiet.
The voice-controlled assistant has revealed Apple’s plans for a new store in the Broadway shopping center.
A gang leader who orchestrated the production of counterfeit credit cards and then used them to purchase over $1 million worth of iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks from Apple Stores throughout the United States has been sentenced to up to nine years in prison.
Apple’s attention to detail, its subtle understanding of the way we interact with our machines, just never ceases to amaze. Case in point: did you know that Apple precisely angles all of the screens on its Apple Store display units to encourage you to walk up and touch them? It’s true!
Apple really wants you to buy into their beautiful Retina display future. So much so, that if customers want to buy an old style MacBook Pro with the same specs as the new MacBook Pro with Retina display, they’re going to have to pay an extra $300 to get it. That extra $300 comes with an optical drive, one extra pound of aluminum, and a lower resolution screen, just so the fatty MacBook Pro can keep up with its slimmer sister everyone’s drooling over, but hey, at least you’ll still have an Ethernet port.
The official Apple Store app has just gotten an incremental update, which now makes it easier than ever to give Apple your money.
The big new feature is Express Checkout, which like Apple’s official website, lets you buy items with your default billing and shipping information with just a tap.
The other feature — exclusive to the iPhone 4S — is a geolocation feature that alerts local Apple Store employees when you’ve arrived to pick up an order. This should make it a lot quicker to pick up your new MacBook Pro than flagging down a random specialist when you arrive, then waiting for him to go in back and find your item.
You can download the new update through the App Store.
Source: ITunes
Via: Macstories
Like all of Apple’s popular products, the MacBook Pro suffered a shipping delay soon after it went on sale on Monday. It first appeared in the Apple online store with a 5-7 day wait, but it didn’t take long before than turned into 7-10 days. On Tuesday the delay slipped again to 2-3 weeks. And this morning that situation has only gotten worse.