This Week's Sponsor:

PowerPhotos

The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac

Posts tagged with "apple store"

New Apple Stores In Italy And Australia Opening This Saturday

Apple will this Saturday hold two Apple Store grand openings on opposite ends of the world with one opening in Italy and the other in Australia. The new Australian Apple Store is located in Cheltenham Victoria within the Westfield Southland shopping centre. Dubbed the Southland Apple Store, it will become the twelfth Apple Store within Australia and third within the state of Victoria.

Over in Italy Apple will be opening a new store in Florence located within the I Gigli suburban shopping center — as we reported earlier this year it is on the ground floor of the shopping center and faces a large circular courtyard. The I Gigli Apple Store will be opening at 9:00am this Saturday, August 13th whilst the Southland store in Australia opens at 10:00am this Saturday after the local media have a period for photo opportunities.

It was noted last month that Apple was expecting to open 30 new Apple Stores by September 30th, after these two store openings this Saturday Apple has 26 left with less than two months to accomplish that goal.

[Via Delimiter, ifoAppleStore]

Apple Store Observations on the New MacBook Air

I checked in at 11:35. Late for my 11:15 appointment, the Apple Store representative offered to fit me in at 13:00 for a brief MacBook repair. I could replace the fan myself — which unfortunately wasn’t rattling that morning as it had been in previous days — but there’s too many screws to remove and I wanted an excuse to test out the MacBook Air. For an hour I visited with the both 11“ and 13” MacBook models, getting a feel for the weight and size while opening every app I could, playing music or fullscreen videos, and getting to know whatever neighbors who casually stopped into the Apple Store to check out Apple’s latest machines. You could say the MacBook Air is pretty great (there’s no denying that), but I found the people to be much more interesting.

Read more

“The Americana at Brand” Apple Store Opens in Glendale, California

Officially announced earlier this week and rumored for several months, the new “The Americana at Brand” Apple Store has opened today in Glendale, California, at 10 AM, roughly 500 feet away from the original Glendale Galleria retail location dubbed store R001, which opened on May 19, 2001. The Glendale Galleria Apple Store was the first location to be planned (thus the “R001”), but it opened a few hours after the Tysons Corner one because of timezone differences with the East Coast.

The new Apple Store in Glendale will serve as a way to drive customers to a second location relatively near to the highly trafficked Galleria store – this is not the first time Apple has opened retail stores with short distance between each other.

A MacStories reader sent us some photos of the new Store, which uses an all-new glass front panel with floating Apple logo, and obviously has new Lion signage and promo material, as well as iPad Smart Signs on the inside. We are told there was a line to get in earlier this morning, though we don’t know if Apple gave away promo material like t-shirts or postcards to celebrate the launch of the new store, as they usually do.

After the break, we have embedded more photos and two videos showing the grand opening and Apple employees cheering and clapping this morning.

[Thanks, Aditya] Read more

Your Order Status on the Apple Store Got Prettier Overnight

We didn’t have any luck with getting the new order status UI in Italy, but it might be a good thing: we can show you what’s changed overnight in the Apple Store as it went down for a couple of hours. If you haven’t already noticed, Apple has spruced up their order pages to make navigation easier; important buttons are more noticeable (tracking and pre-signing for delivery are big and pushable); orders are accompanied with pictures and full products names instead of weird model identifiers; and now you have access to a drop-down menu so you can return items (but why would you?) and print invoices.

As noted by AppleInsider,

More specifically, the previously-schedule maintenance saw upgrades to the Online Order Status component for the Apple online stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, according to people familiar with the matter. An internal memo regarding the matter distributed on Friday stated that the improvements were designed to “enhance the overall look, feel, and functionality for a better customer experience.”

Just like the update to the support pages, Apple is improving navigation and bringing their site up to speed for 2011.

[via AppleInsider]

Apple to open Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal

The last time we heard evidence of a Grand Central Apple Store was back in May, when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA) was contacted by Apple who was interested in retail space. Today, according to the New York Post, Apple will open a 23,000 square-foot store in the terminal’s north and northeast balconies. Affected is the Metrazeur restaurant, bought out in the apparent deal. Apple’s rent will initially cost $800,000 for the retail space during a ten-year lease.

It should be noted that the deal isn’t finalized yet: the MTA still has to ask their financial committee to approve the deal on Monday before receiving a final okay from the board of directors on Wednesday. With the deal likely to rake in $5 million in profits (at minimum), and with the renter being Apple, the MTA is undoubtedly going to vote “yes”. I don’t think there’s any question there.

[via NY Post]

Apple Reveals One Billion Visitors To Retail Stores, Another 33 Stores Set To Open By September 25

Apple today revealed to an Australian site, Current, that it has seen over 1 billion customers through its retail doors since it opened the first Apple Store in Washington just over ten years ago in May of 2001. Current got the information from Apple after they had contacted them to confirm the opening of the eleventh Apple Store in Australia, which is set to open this Saturday in Penrith, New South Wales.

Apple Retail has been in business for 10 years. During this period, we have had over 1 billion visitors through our doors, many of whom are new to the Mac, as the Apple Store is the best place to learn about all the latest products from Apple.

Apple also revealed that by the end of Apple’s financial year (ending September 25th) they plan to have 363 Apple Stores open, worldwide. Given that Apple currently has 330 stores open that means Apple is planning to open another 33 stores in just over two months – effectively that is a new store roughly every three days averaged out.

Our retail offering continues to grow, with Penrith the 11th store in Australia, since we opened Apple Store Sydney just three years ago. Globally we are planning to have 363 stores in fiscal 2011.

Current also asked Apple representatives what made their retail stores so popular and got a response that referenced service as being the “hallmark of every Apple Store”. In particular they pointed towards the fact that the response from customers has been “overwhelming” with 1 million customers taking an advantage of the Personal Setup offering in the last quarter alone.

[Current via The Next Web]

Apple Set To Renovate The New York SoHo Store

Apple seems to be on a Apple Store renovation spree, with reports today that its landmark SoHo store is also set to undergo renovations sometime in the next three months in order to increase the space of the store. It follows the renovations of the Fifth Avenue store, also in New York, that started earlier this month as well as reports that a store in Miami and Hawaii will also be undergoing renovations.

Whilst under renovations, the SoHo Apple store will be relocated to a temporary location, somewhere within Manhattan to accommodate the thousands of customers that visit the SoHo store every day. As ifoAppleStore points out, the SoHo store, which opened in July of 2002, is currently the smallest Apple Store within Manhattan and is constantly crowded.

The renovations will apparently primarily consist of a reconfigured first floor, with the exception of the glass staircase which will not be changed – it was the first such glass staircase to be built in an Apple store. Because the Apple store is housed in the heritage listed Prince Street building the construction work did also have to receive approval by the ‘Landmarks Preservation Commission’. They did approve the works, finding that they “will have no effect on significant protected features of the building”.

[Via ifoAppleStore]

Apple Set To Renovate Retail Stores In Hawaii And Miami

Over the past few months a couple of Apple retail stores have begun to go under renovation, including the flagship Fifth Avenue Store in New York. Two reports today are saying that the Hawaii Ala Moana store and the Miami Lincoln Road store are set to undergo renovations sometime in the near future.

ifoAppleStore is reporting that the Hawaii store, whilst it is being renovated, will be moved to a temporary location just a few doors down. That temporary store will open sometime this week but will be much smaller than the current store – which is already quite busy. It isn’t known what the exact renovation plans are but the expected cost is $250,000.

Meanwhile MacNN notes that Apple recently had to retract a proposal to demolish their Lincoln Road Apple Store and move into another nearby building after the Historic Preservation Board rejected Apple’s plans. The Historic Preservation board had wanted the new building to match more closely to the architecture of the surrounding region as well as being smaller. It’s unlikely that this means Apple will give up on Miami renovation plans, instead they will probably rethink their design plans or find a more appropriate location.

[ifoAppleStore and MacNN via TUAW]

Apple Planning New Store in Sydney, Grand Opening in Reading This Saturday

According to two separate reports from the well-sourced ifoAppleStore.com, Apple is about to open a new retail location in Reading, UK, on Saturday. The grand opening, scheduled for June 25 at 9.30 AM, comes after a five-year wait that saw rumors constantly pinpointing the new Reading Apple Store about an hour west of London. Located in The Oracle Shopping Centre, the store is said to occupy spaces of two former stores on the upper level of the mall. Rumors of a new Apple Store in Reading go back to 2007.

The Westfield Hornsby shopping centre.

Meanwhile, the website also claims Apple is considering another store in Sydney’s suburban area, at the Westfield Hornsby shopping mall about 17 miles northwest of Sydney. Early rumors suggest a 2012 grand opening in this location that already has 305 retailers, a cinema, and a restaurant across its 1 million square feet space.

Update: screenshot of an Apple email about the Reading grand opening this weekend, courtesy of @HabibCham.

[The Oracle photo via]