I am an Apple Fanboy
Apple Fanboys
Originally uploaded by aswitzer.
A new Apple store opened on Saturday at the nearby Park Meadows Mall. If you are an Apple user, or modest to fanatic Apple fan (Mac’s, iPod’s, iTunes, iLife, etc) you really should attend a store opening - it’s quite the experience.
I’m a fairly recent convert myself, mostly thanks to two good friends (Lance Davala and Chris Smaling) that wore me down over the last 3 years. I finally got a Mac Mini about a year ago, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The sliver and white little box drives my home media center, something I take great pride in. My next laptop will definitely be a MacBook.
So, Lance gave me a few weeks notice that a new Apple store would be opening right by us. I’ve had to skip past such events, but this time it was too close, and Tobey was old enough to hang out in line with me. I’m proud to say that i know the guy that was first in line when we arrived - Lance of course. He got there at about 6:30 for the 9:30 opening. We arrived about 8:45, as I knew there was no way Tobey could wait that long. We carpooled with Chris, so Chris grabbed a spot in line (about 200 or so people from the front) and Tobey and I went to talk with Lance. The people at the front of the line were a lot of fun, and apparently Lance was interviewed by at least one Mac magazine and pictures were taken by Apple.com. (I’ll add links here if he finds them) After awhile, I felt guilty for stealing Lance’s front of the line thunder, so we went to hang with Chris til the store opened.
At this point, the line had grown by at least a 150 more people., About 5 minutes before the store opened, and right before Tobey started to really run out of patience - a loud commotion came from a nearby department store. It swelled to a volume that could probably be heard thru-out the Park Meadows Mall. At this point, I turned to Chris and asked - “Do you think Steve Jobs is here?” He laughed, but just then the source of the noise came around the corner right at us. It was a swarm of Apple employees (from the new store and other neaby stores) About 30-40 of them, whooping and hollering and high-fiving us as they ran by. As we recovered from that a few minues later, we turned to see that the line was moving into the store. Now, all of the employees were lined up on either side of the store, and we high-fived and smiled as we walked past them as they applauded and clapped. What a surreal experience. Can you ever say that you had a similar experience as the customer of a new store? I bet not. 
April 24th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Actually, yeah, I can. CompUSA when it opened its store up in Westminster had the same thing. Employees whooping & hollering, applauding, hi-fiving.
I dropped by the Apple store later that day, still crowded, but the Genius I was working with (my iPod was misbehaving) said it was shoulder-to-shoulder.
I really like their new register-free design…