Saturday, October 16, 2004 |
00:08 - He had a better camera anyway
http://www.macobserver.com/gallery/miniopen
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Here's where I was this morning:
That's me dead-center in the fourth picture, in the black shirt and blue shorts, taking a picture of Kris. Apparently the Mac Observer photographer was the guy with the big camera hovering around us at the front of the line all morning. It wasn't a huge crowd as these things go—only a couple hundred attendees in line—but they did run out of shirts well before noon.
The new stores are pretty cool; not practical at all in a lot of ways, such as the white epoxy Air-Force-One-hangar floor that gets all scuffed up after even ten minutes of use by people with street shoes. And there are no G5 Power Macs or eMacs; this is an "iPod store" more than anything else, which makes sense given that the iPod is becoming as much a brand identified with Apple as the Mac is.
The self-serve kiosks are quite slick, except that the main POS screens don't appear to have been completely coded; instead of a welcome screen directing customers to swipe their barcodes in front of the laser thingy on the right, it has an esoteric-looking "POS" application that's clearly only for employee use. I guess they'll probably fix that soon; everything else about the kiosks is far too well-designed (when a transaction requires keyboard and mouse input, those items slide out on a tray from the wall where they're hidden). And the computers throughout the store all have newly done display software—four icons in the middle of the desktop that lead to schedules for in-store demos, product info, Genius Bar scheduling, and so on. Plus some new iChat/iSight demo apps that are launched from a Finder folder window with a customized background image that makes it look like a launch menu, just like that feature is intended to be used. Clearly there's been a lot of effort put into this launch.
After getting our t-shirts, Kris and I headed from the Oakridge mall up to the Stanford store in Palo Alto; man, is that ever a swanky mall. The store was pretty much identical, except it fronted onto an outdoor walkway with lots of landscaping; and after a few minutes in the store, we ran into a guy who'd been in line with us back at Oakridge. We weren't the only ones who'd decided to spend the morning Apple Store hopping. A good time was had by all.
Then we saw Team America, after which experience I'm going to forever revel in every single movie review by people who hate it because of its content—these are guaranteed to be reviewers who loved Fahrenheit 9/11, and if to them the movie is "just a little bit too America F--k Yeah! for comfort"—well, good. It's not supposed to be "comfortable". It's a movie... and it's pro-War-on-Terror. I know that DOES NOT COMPUTE, DANGER WILL ROBINSON, but sometimes life throws us these little mysteries. Consider it a test of character.
On the way home from the theater, at the corner of Almaden and Blossom Hill (two major thoroughfares in southern San Jose), all four streetcorners were occupied by a concerted group of people smiling and waving to traffic under Bush/Cheney 2004 signs. To my great startlement and delight, there was an almost unbroken chorus of honks from passersby, and smiles all around; these guys were clearly having a great day. And one sign, which I wish I'd thought to snap a picture of, had an extra handwritten message: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
I honked my car's brains out.
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