With Lion’s release in July, Apple will switch over to a digital distribution of OS X through the Mac App Store. What if you’re one of the many Americans still on a modem, though? Or what if your broadband connection is slow? What if you are one of the increasing number of broadband users with a download cap? How will you install the 4GB OS X update?
Apple’s got a suggestion: bring your Mac on into the Apple Store and piggy back our free WiFi. Something tells me they might regret that.
Apple has just erected plywood walls around their iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City, and some massive renovations are about to go down. Could the iconic glass cube be about to go sphere?
Want to know what it’s like to work at the Apple Store? How to get hired, what training you’ll receive, how much you’ll be paid, even the choice of words you’ll be forced to use when you let a customer down? A new subscriber only report from the Wall Street Journal has all the juicy details. Here’s the most interesting bits.
Earlier today, Apple’s former VP of Retail Ron Johnson shocked everyone by ending his eleven year career in Cupertino to become CEO of JC Penney, a middle-of-the-road department store chain which sells clothing like this.
At Apple, Johnson famously invented the Apple Store concept, defined by each location’s uniiform low-key community vibe, easily accessible solution stations, troubleshooting Genius Bars and uncluttered and austerely aesthetic layouts. At JC Penney, however, Johnson will largely have to reinvent the 1,100 retail stores he’s already got… and what he’s got sure isn’t pretty. Check out this small sample of JC Penney department stores currently blighting the American landscape.
The headline says it all really, doesn’t it? A man dressed in a white ninja outfit tried to rob the Greensboro, North Carolina Apple Store this morning by smashing through the plate glass facade with his Honda. How do you think that went for him?
For the tenth anniversary of the opening of the first Apple retail location, the stores themselves got new, cutting edge signs made out of iPads.
A lesser talked about gift to celebrate the occasion, given to every Apple Store on earth? A seemingly crummy poster. Make that, a seemingly crummy poster with no images or colors. Make that, a crummy poster with no images or colors packed with over eighteen hundred wordsof dense verbiage.
Don’t let your initial impression fool you, though. A poster this may be, but it’s a great read, full of fascinating tidbits about the Apple Store that I’ve never read before. Here’s some examples.
If you had to write a list of New York City’s most popular attractions for camera-toting tourists, would the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue be on it?
Already famous for its excellent Pro Messenger IM application, eBuddy has taken real-time messaging to the next level with eBuddy XMS – a free, real-time messenger that enabled you to chat with text, pictures, emoticons and more. It features a highly-polished user interface and an experience guaranteed to give apps like WhatsApp and PingChat! some real competition.
In addition to the recent launch of ‘Apple Store 2.0′, the Apple Store application for iPhone also got a much-needed revamp. The latest version of the app works internationally and boasts some great new features.
Opera Mini has been the iPhone browser of choice for many since it launched, promising to be the fastest, most cost-efficient web-browsing experience for your iOS device today. Its recent update made it a universal application delivering all its Opera goodness to the iPad, which impressed Cult of Mac’s Giles Turnball in his recent review.
Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Contacts Journal and Aelios Weather – below!
If anyone was going to ascend naked directly into heaven as beings made entirely out of light, it’s the guys who work for Apple, and while it may not have happened on May 21st as it was supposed to, at least one Apple Store prepared for the Rapture.
(Update: By the request of Apple’s legal department citing trade secrets, we’ve been asked to pull the images from this post.)
Screenshots of Apple’s new RetailMe application for internal iPads have surfaced today. Full of attractive new features, the software is expected to be the tool every Apple retail employee uses when ‘Apple Store 2.0’ goes live on Sunday.
As Apple commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Apple Store retail launch, it’s fun to take a look back and see what things were like a decade ago. In the pre-launch video below from 2001, Steve Jobs gives us a walkthrough of Apple’s newest creation.
On the day of Apple’s 10th Retail Store anniversary, not everyone’s celebrating: in fact, a small but vocal group of Apple Store employees is working hard even now to unionize in response to what they term unfair treatment and compensation.
It is increasingly looking like the huge event Apple has in store for May 22nd isn’t a new product launch, but instead the unveiling of what is being christened Apple Store 2.0… an all new and improved retail experience which could also debut NFC-based payments, and possibly a surprise from Square.
Confirming our exclusive report last week that Apple Stores were scheduling meetings with all retail staff in late May, we’re now hearing reports that all Apple Stores in the United States will hold all-hands meetings for the morning of Sunday, May 22nd. And given the preparations and secrecy, something big seems like it’s about to shakedown in celebration of Apple’s ten year retail anniversary.
Cult of Mac has learned Apple could be scheduling secret employee meetings with retail staff on May 28th between 8 and 10am. Is this just pre-WWDC preparations, or something more?
It looks like Microsoft’s plan to beat Apple in the retail space by building their own Microsoft Stores right across from mall-based Apple Stores is paying off: Microsoft’s successfully chased Apple out of its space in the Bellevue, Washington shopping mall.
It’s something of a pyrrhic victory, though. Apple’s just moving to the second floor of the mall to a larger retail space. Directly overhead, overlooking Microsoft’s store, where it will literally be living in Apple’s shadow. If there was ever a time to LOL, this is it.
This is one trend you will either love or hate. It seems that dancing at the Apple Store (and posting the performance to YouTube) continues to grow in popularity. Why let iPod-toting dancing silhouettes have all the fun when you can do it yourself at a mall near you? Especially when every MacBook has an iCam.
One frequent dancer many have seen is iJustine, who’s been dancing at Apple Store locations around the country for several years. Last week the mythical White iPhone 4 finally shipped, so Justine celebrated the occasion down in Orlando. And several shoppers joined in!
For some people, getting the chance to work for Apple seems like one of the coolest jobs on the planet. Being surrounded by everything Apple. Super discounts on iMacs. Talking to customers about how incredibly magical the products are. If that all sounds awesome to you, then go ahead and disregard the fact that it’s easier to get into Harvard University than to get a job at Apple.
Here is Cult of Mac’s first-hand look at how the Apple hiring process plays out.
Job listings for ‘Store Leader’ positions on Apple’s German site suggest that the company is opening a new retail store in Augsburg, Germany, which could be its sixth in the country following the recent opening of the Dresden store.
The listings were first picked up by German Mac blog Macerkopf.de (Google translation) after selecting the state of Bavaria in Apple’s online job search. It’s unclear where exactly in Augsburg the new store could be located, however, it’s expected it will end up in the biggest mall in that area – the City-Galerie Augsburg – around 40 miles from the Munich store.
Apple announced that it plans to open 40-50 new stores in 2011, around half of which would be located outside the United States. At the end of the company’s first fiscal quarter for this year, it had 236 stores in the U.S. and 87 internationally.
[via ifoAppleStore]
Shipping times for the iPad 2 from the Apple online store have dropped today, with new orders now facing a wait of 2-3 weeks down from the previous 3-4 weeks. The new shipping times aren’t just U.S. specific either – they apply to every country in which the iPad 2 is currently available.
A reduction in the shipping delay of the second generation iPad is a sign Apple is clearly dealing with the overwhelming demand of the device’s international launch.
The battle against the jailbreakers has always seemed to be an uphill one for Apple; it takes hackers just days to break into the latest iOS releases, and last year federal regulators said that it was no longer illegal to hack or jailbreak an iPhone. However, there is one thing Apple can but a definite stop to, and that’s accessing Cydia using its Wi-Fi networks in Apple retail stores.
If you try accessing Cydia on a device connected to one of Apple’s Wi-Fi hotspots, you’ll be surprised to see Apple’s website load instead.
Although this isn’t going to deter jailbreaking one slight little bit, it’s still rather funny.
[via iPhoneDownloadBlog]
Plans to build a 16,000 square-foot Apple store in the balconies of Grand Central’s main terminal may have been abandoned by the Cupertino company, according to a source close to the M.T.A., who says that preliminary negotiations have fallen through.
Jeffrey Roseman, a retail executive for Newark Knight Frank, posted a tweet on Thursday that backed up these claims, and indicated plans for Apple’s largest store in the world weren’t going ahead: “Lets see if Apple NOT coming to Grand Central, gets as much press as it got, when the rumor started.”
The store was expected to open this September, celebrating 10 years of Apple retail, and attracting some of the 700,000 people who visit the terminal each day. A source for Cult of Mac confirmed Apple’s plans to build the superstore back in February, however, it seems that the M.T.A.’s strict guidelines made Apple’s plans too good to be true.
<strong>Note from Leander: I’ve reached out to my source who said the deal was signed, sealed and delivered. I’ll report here what they say.
The Apple Store just went offline. New goodies coming soon!
Does it mean the iPad 2 will be available to order today?
Reddit user labuzan posted a nice story today, detailing how a family iPhone went through the laundry, and what happened when they took the dead device to an Apple Store and told their story.
The results were not what you might expect.
Instead of charging for a replacement phone, the Apple employee serving them handed one over free of charge, saying: “We made an exception.”
Needless to say, a family already loyal to Apple just got its loyalty quotient increased by several notches.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — A lot of people complain about Apple’s stonewalling, but be thankful you’re not iKlear.
The popular screen cleaning company was horrified when Apple retail suddenly dropped its products from the stores — without a word of explanation.
“We’d been with them for more than eight-and-a-half years,” said Monica Younghein, spokeswoman for the family run business.
The company’s business halved overnight. It’s at CES trying to build business back up.
What made the blow especially painful, is that 11 months earlier Apple had chosen iKlear as the exclusive worldwide supplier of cleaning products in Apple stores. Apple retail is now selling similar cleaning products from a competitor. The competing products are inferior, said Younghein.
“It’s a disservice to Apple users to sell products that don’t work well,” she said. “And we don’t know why they did it.”
