Was riding around the Ginza District in Tokyo one morning the other week, looking for the Apple Store there when I came across this one at the end of the main Ginza thoroughfare. (This was before I found the real thing.)
Wonder if there are any geniuses in this Apple store. Didn’t have time to get off and check.
Apple Inc. says over two million people have purchased a copy of Mac OS X Leopard, or OS 10.5, since its official release 6pm of October 26. The figure includes retail, reseller, online, new Mac sales, voluntary arrangements and agreements.
It’s shaping to be the fastest and hottest selling Apple OS so far, even surpassing Tiger sales.
And to mention an unmentionable, the over-6GB install is the hottest download on torrents and the net in the past 48 hours, making a large and incalculable leap over and above the 2M legal acquisitions. (You know who you are. Tsk. Tsk.)
At an Apple Store, you can now buy anything you want, as much as you want, except if they’re iPhones.
Apple feels bad about the quarter million iPhones people have bought, but have not activated. (Guess what happened to those.) It seems people have been buying in bulk, with the precise intention of reselling them, for eventual unlocking and use with different carriers, or for use outside of the continental United States.
Hoping there won’t be more of that kind of Think Different business this Christmas season, Apple is now limiting over-the-counter purchases to just two iPhones per customer - and you’ll need to use a credit card; your cash is no good to Steve Jobs.
Hoooookay…
In fact, they’re so serious about it they aren’t even allowing iPhone purchases using Apple Gift Cards, even if the gift cards themselves were bought using credit cards.
It’s one of the rare times a company Thinks Different and deliberately refuses perfectly good business.
Feh! All this Thinking Different is giving me a headache.
Japan’s Apple Store in Tokyo is in the high-end shopping district called Ginza. Specifically, Block 3, or Ginza 3. The location is a bit intimidating for the budget-conscious among us, since it’s ensconced in a place where across the street is Tiffany’s and Bvlgari, but the prices seem to be roughly the same as in Manila, my home base. Its advantage is that everything is there.
It’s roughly in the middle of the enormous shopping area, and only the Ginza subway line goes directly there (the cab flagdown rate is Y660, so that option was out). You’d have to know which exit to get out of to avoid walking a lot. I was told to find exit A13 which pops out right across the street from the store, in front of the classy Matsuya Department Store.
The Ginza store has the distinction of being the first Apple Store to open outside of the United States, and I was excited to go there. I had broken off rooting for stuff in Akihabara (something I could have happily done for weeks) Friday afternoon to go to Ginza for the Leopard launch, not realizing that being an authentic Apple Store, they’d shut it down for a couple of hours before the 6pm release.
I was there 4:01.
There were some guys at the door, and oblivious me tried barging in only to be stopped by one of them saying in rapid Nippongo that I should line up like everyone else, or something like that. I took a look to one side and saw the forming line and it dawned on me I wouldn’t be able to get in for a couple of hours yet.
After the Apple guy realized I didn’t speak Japanese, he managed to explain that they had just closed in prep for the 6pm launch, and that I should line up. I went to the end of the line, which was nearly a block long already, and waited. The people around me all had white earbuds on, and they were all just calmly looking around. I realized I was among my kind and relaxed. (I did cause a bit of attention when I pulled out an iPhone to listen to music - their phone system requires 3G, so an iPhone was a rare thing over there.)
5:30pm, Friday, October 26: Hundreds form a four-block line outside the Apple Store in Ginza, Tokyo, braving the rain and cold (the Doodler being one of them), waiting for the doors to open at 6pm for the launching of Mac OS 10.5. One more:
Picture gallery (on the street and in the store), and full first-person account this weekend. (Yeah, I took these pictures - it’s my first time to be part of a real, authentic Apple Store wait-in as opposed to just reading about them and thinking, what idiots these guys are; I would never do that. Famous last words. I was tickled pink, although that may be from the freezing rain. More later.)
