NEW YORK — To get to the front of the line for the 3G iPhone here at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store takes about two hours of waiting from back to front. All for a device that probably won't work until tomorrow, thanks to a crash of Apple's activation system. It's much quicker — about two minutes — to just walk from the front to the back. Play the clip to ogle the desperate iPhone-seeking horde.
NEW YORK — I'm sitting outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store here in New York, writing up a post about the long line for the iPhone, when a pretty girl wearing aviator sunglasses and a white blouse sits next to the guy sitting next to me. She says to her friend: "So I've got a date with Dan." "Who?" the guy asks. "The guy who was first in line — the guy who bought the first iPhone today. He's doing the documentary thing, his name is Dan."
As Apple started to ring up sales of its new iPhone 3G, the scene at the flagship Apple Store in San Francisco was much quieter than last year. By 8 p.m. last night only 12 people were in line, and by 4 a.m. only 40. By 7:45 a.m. this morning, the line had grown past 325, nearly to the length it was at last year's launch, with Apple Store employees dispensing coffee and water to the waiting crowd. One man, who had taken the 20th spot in line, was trying to sell it (unsuccessfully) for $100. How did Robert Scoble get into the first 20 allowed into the store? He had his friend wait 36 hours in line, sleeping in a tent. (At San Francisco's minimum wage, you and your friends owe the guy $351, Scoble.) How was the turnout in Palo Alto? Lame. New York? Lame. Vancouver? Lame. Meanwhile, the news about the coincidental Apple TV update went by nearly unnoticed, and Apple bungled the release of MobileMe. So while there was a crowd, even here in the heart of Apple country, the pictures after the jump show the religious fervor is considerably less intense than before.
Isobella Jade didn't have a computer when she started her modeling career in 2005. But she needed one for scheduling shoots. Her solution? Work from the Apple Store all day. When our MacBooks break down, we do the same! Except we're not "body parts models," so when the clerks ask if they can help, they're asking if they can help us please stop now. The "trailer" from Jade's autobiography,Almost 5'4", is embedded below. Skip two minutes in for the Apple Store's weird cameo.
A patent application filed last week suggests that Apple plans to sell the company's high-margin fetish objects in 3D virtual worlds. Now your avatar can put on skinny jeans and a colorfully-printed hoodie and spend your money in an ephemeral simulacrum of the Apple retail experience — even if you live in Humptulips, Washington, hundreds of miles from one of the company's real-world boutiques. Coincidentally, a methamphetamine epidemic is raging in places underserved by Genius Bars. Luckily, Apple knows how to reach that demo:
Two employees of the Salem, N.H., Apple Store (where I shop, natch) have been arrested and charged with stealing 332 iPhones. No word on what the two delinquents did with the phones, worth almost $133,000, but we suspect they were sold off to be unlocked overseas. Here's what I want to know: How the hell did they steal 300-plus phones?
Apple's retail staff increased 44 percent from September 2007 to December 2007. Over the past two years, the retail division's staff numbers have risen between 2 and 15 percent per quarter. The company now has 11,400 "equivalent" full-time retail positions. At this year's shareholder meeting, head of Apple Retail Ron Johnson pegged the number of retail employees at 15,000, indicating that a huge percentage of them are considered "part-time."
Two weeks after it was introduced, the MacBook Air is now on display at the local Apple Store for you to play with. But why did it take two weeks for models to go on display? Apple has been taking preorders on the MacBook Air since moments after Steve Jobs finished his keynote at Macworld, but unless you were at the show, you couldn't actually see one until this week.
Megamillionaire Ron Johnson, Apple's senior VP of retail, announced that Apple will open an additional 40 retail stores next year. The company already fruitfully operates over 200 stores worldwide, but this year Apple will focus on international markets including several new stores in the U.K., Brazil, and perhaps Mexico City. I don't know, Ron: Until you reach Starbucks territory, can you really say you have enough U.S. outlets? (Photo by Sarah Baker)
The new Apple store opens tomorrow in the Meatpacking! It also has glass stairs! [Photo: (AP/Mark Lennihan]
So I walk into the Apple Store at 10 a.m., and there's already a 90-minute wait for repairs at the Genius Bar. I spend the next hour commiserating with another writer with a broken Mac, as whiny iPhone owners and WAAHHHHH IPOD NO PLAY students hog the line. Yes, I friggin' know that if I had spent another $100 on an Apple ProCare account and scheduled an appointment ahead of time and blah blah blah mwah mwah — give it a rest, iJerks. My Pro account had expired without so much as a warning email. What I really want is a separate service line for those of us with real, work-stopping computer problems so we needn't sit and watch those of you with bricked vanity phones because you tried some trick off Gizmodo.
Ron Johnson, Apple's senior VP of retail, exercised options for 700,000 shares of AAPL at a strike price of $23.72 yesterday. He sold later in the day at around $185. That's a net of over $112 million. Not a bad payday, but he certainly earned it. Johnson has led Apple's retail strategy from day one — and the former Target executive is arguably more responsible for Apple's retail success than Steve Jobs.
Apple is opening a retail storefront in China next summer, just in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. We're glad Apple's sweatshop workers will finally be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor and buy themselves some overpriced gadgetry. With a year or so worth of wages. [IfoAppleStore]
Ah, Silicon Valley: One moment, you're worth $3 million; the next, you can't even afford an iPhone. That's the situation Zooomr founder Kris Tate found himself in last week. A tipster who was on the scene expands on our earlier report that Tate's credit card was declined at the Palo Alto Apple Store as he tried to buy the must-have geek toy. Moments before, the tipster says, Tate was bragging about his net worth. The eyewitness account, after the jump.
AppleInsider reports today that Apple will be opening its third New York store at 401 W. 14th Street, on the corner of 14th and 9th. That corner was the former home to both cheapo supermarket Western Beef (a favorite of firemen!) and recently relocated restaurant Markt (a favorite of cheap Belgians!). The space reportedly goes for "$5 million to $6 million a year." (With Apple's 2nd quarter profit growth of 88%, that's chump change.) Speaking of chumps, the news bodes well for MePa revelers who now can go check their Facebook messages after a long night of Jaeger shots and constant yelling. —Josh
What do you mean, that's not news? Lilliputian and putatively homeless model Isobella Jade may be writing her memoir in the Apple Store, but she still has time to join the hottest new marketing trend: a video trailer for your book. Thrill to Isobella dashing about the streets of New York in heels and a little black dress, briefly disrobing, noshing a few choice selections from the Wendy's dollar menu, spilling coffee, and rendering a voiceover that could challenge any on Grey's Anatomy for sheer tedium. Totally sucks about her MySpace page, though.
Will someone please just give wee homeless model mini-memoirist Isobella Jade a book deal already? Or at least a sandwich? (The junior cheeseburger deluxe from Wendy's is apparently her favorite.) Metro has a short interviewlet with the homeless pixie who dwells, CHUD-like, in the crevices of the Soho Apple Store:
