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New Apple Store in Seoul opens Gangnam style!

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The distinctive glass facade of the new Apple Gangnam store in Seoul, South Korea.
Just look at that gradient frit!
Photo: Apple

The new Apple Store that opens Friday in South Korea looks a little different than your typical sparkling shrine to the empire that iPhone built.

The new Seoul store’s striking facade features a “completely new gradient frit and mirrored coating treatment that blurs the transition from top to bottom,” Apple said Tuesday in a press release previewing Apple Gangnam. The building’s unique face also “shifts in appearance during different times of day or seasons.”

Fritted glass — which is “printed with ink that contains ultra-small particles of ground-up glass – a.k.a. ‘frit,'” according Dip-Tech — proves popular with modern architects. (To me, it just looks cool.)

Pics and K-pop: Cupertino shows off big new Apple Store opening in Seoul

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Apple Myeongdong, Apple’s newest location in South Korea, opens Saturday, April 9.
Apple Myeongdong, Apple’s newest and largest store in South Korea, opens on Saturday in Seoul.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s newest retail location, Apple Myeongdong, opens on Saturday in South Korea’s capital, Seoul. Ahead of the opening of its biggest store in the country, Apple showed off a preview with photos and descriptions of the store’s Today at Apple programs celebrating Korean culture, including a new K-pop session.

Remarkably, the new, two-level Apple Store will employ a whopping 250 people who, collectively, speak 11 languages. So, wherever you’re coming from, you’re likely to be understood as you drop a bundle on new Apple gear!

Apple could troll Samsung by putting a store in its backyard

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Samsung
This could very well be a future arial shot of the Seoul street layout.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple has been opening plenty of Apple stores in China, but it could go even further into East Asia with a brand new retail store — based directly across the street from Samsung’s headquarters in Seoul, South Korea.

We guess Tim Cook’s been taking trolling notes again!

Water way to charge your iPhone: Seoul installs hydroelectric charging points

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(Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
Smartphone users in Seoul, South Korea can use new hydroelectric charging stations to power their handset. (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)

While we don’t yet know what kind of battery life the iPhone 6 is going to have, it’s always good to have a way of charging your smartphone when you’re out and about.

With that in mind, the city of Seoul in South Korea has announced that it is building a series of outdoor recharging ports along manmade stream, the Cheonggyecheon, in the city’s downtown region. Rather than drawing from the city’s regular power grid, the chargers will instead draw their current from various hydroelectric turbines which are embedded in the stream itself.