Apple’s seven Japan retail stores are holding special events to celebrate oshogatsu, New Year’s Day, which is generally considered the country’s biggest annual holiday. The store events include DJ appearances, workshops for kids, and the traditional fukubukuro, or Lucky Bags.

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It’s been 10 months since the future Chinook Centre store in Calgary (Alb., Canada) was first revealed, and now a space has finally become available and a lease signed on space #125 at the mall. The Reitman’s clothing store is moving out of their ground-floor space by the end of next March, freeing up 3,651 [...]

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Apple late-filed its fiscal 2006 financial statement with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this morning, taking an $84 million charge related to stock option grants between 1997 and 2002, and revealing more financial information about its Retail segment operation. The company had previously released sales and profit figures for the retail stores. But [...]

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The DigiTimes Web site claims that “Apple opens first large retail store in Taiwan,” with a December 23rd grand opening in Taipei that featured commemorative T-shirts. But a look at Apple’s own Taiwanese Web site reveals that it’s actually a new reseller store in Guanghua Market. The store features the usual bright-white interior of Apple [...]

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Even as a grand opening video has disappeared from the Web, another amazing Apple-produced video has appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog site. The five-minute video was filmed in the Glendale Galleria store, and intended for internal distribution, encouraging employees to process more purchases with handheld computers, and to reach a 20 percent goal. The [...]

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Thanks to Adolfo for the photos of the authorized Apple reseller in the town of Fortaleza (Brazil), a city of 2.4 million residents. The store has large show windows, wooden display furniture and the typical Apple Center look.

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Apple controls every detail of its retail store experience, but it can’t control the environment outside. So when Apple posted a photo of the San Francisco store on a prominent downtown corner, it did some extensive Photoshopping of the image to clean it up. Apple’s artists took out overhead power lines, power poles and even [...]

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A reminder that Apple typically sweeps up the refreshed, refurbished and otherwise manhandled merchandise that’s collected during the month, and then markets it via an unmarked sale table at the end of each month. The pressure to sell, sell, sell is particularly high at the end of each quarter at these tables. Merchandise ranges from [...]

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The MacInChina Web site reports that three more authorized Apple resellers have opened in China in the past five days, all in smaller towns outside Beijing.

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The amazing new shopping center Kanyon opened in Istanbul (Turkey) last May, offering 400,000 square-feet of retail space, 26 tower floors of offices, and 179 luxury residences. Among the retailers opening in the

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You may know that Apple takes video of its store grand openings, most recently using HD-capable camcorders. The videos are distributed internally, but now the Trafford Centre (UK) store opening video has appeared on the MacTV Web site [Not surprisingly, the video was deleted about Dec. 25th at Apple's demand.]. The movie includes behind-the-scenes views [...]

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A Weymouth (Mass.) police officer may have saved the life of an Apple store burglary suspect by stopping his car for having a license plate covered with a brown plastic bag. Joseph Dillon, 48, was bleeding heavily from wounds that police say occurred when he smashed the front glass window of the Derby Street Shoppes [...]

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Apple is making it easy to purchase iPods, and even laptops at the larger stores, during the crowded holiday season. Like last year, at least one table at each store has been cordoned off and converted into an EZ Pay check-out station, and stocked with iPods to allow shoppers to grab-and-go. Each table has an [...]

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The AppleInsider Web site reports that Apple has finalized real estate transactions to open a store along Princes Street in the central business district of Edinburgh (Scotland), opening some time in 2007. In October tipsters revealed that Apple will open a store in downtown Glasgow. The Princes Street store will have a view of the [...]

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The MacOnline authorized Apple reseller chain has opened a branch in Concepción (Chile), a city of about 380,000 along the central western coast of South America. The 1,000 square-foot store uses the familiar black-and-white color scheme of early U.S. Apple stores, and the light-wood furniture of current stores. It includes a service (aka “Genius”) bar, [...]

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Florida is one of the hottest Apple retail states, with 10 existing stores, four more planned in the coming year, and now the expansion of an existing store. Tape measures have been active at the Town Center mall in Boca Raton, where the current 30-foot wide store is jammed with customers. Fortunately, a wider space [...]

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The 4.1 million residents of the Houston (Tex.) metro area will receive their fifth Apple store next summer when the Baybrook Mall store opens on the city’s southeast side. The mall not only serves the surrounding high-income residents, but also NASA, ARCO, Philips Chemical, The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin, Exxon Mobil and the University of [...]

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A characteristic of Apple’s retail plan has always been to spare no expense or detail when creating the experience that customers will encounter when shopping at their stores. Now a Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel article demonstrates how expensive it was to create an Apple store from scratch at the West Town Mall earlier this year. According [...]

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Apple is now promoting “Express Shopping” at their retail stores, saying on the Web site to, “Select your gift, swipe your card, and you’re ready to go.” Like last year, the stores now have iPod or Mac Express check-out tables to keep the waiting lines short Apple says that making a store purchase is, “Easy [...]

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Just days after the city of Boston gave final approval for an Apple retail store at 815 Boylston in that city, passerby Jim noticed some changes in the property: the upper windows have been removed and boarded up, the former CopyCop awning has been removed, and the entrance has plywood over it. Expect the building [...]

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