Last night marked the opening of Boston’s Apple store on Bolyston street; the largest in the US. From what I saw on Twitter, crowds started early in the day. The building is across from the Prudential Mall and is situated between a Fidelity Bank branch and a Copy-Cop. Taking form of many of the other mega-Apple stores the exterior is of thick glass with a prominent eight foot tall Apple logo displayed on the third floor. Curiously however, is the fact that some of the other surrounding buildings also use similar glass motifs including the Fidelity’s entrance and across the street in the new hotel and condos on the top floors. I do wonder if this was intentional or simply a common design element of this decade that I am just noticing.
I arrived around 5:15pm, with the store slated to open at 6:00. Apple had very carefully planned for the crowds and had police presence helping with metal barricades similar to what they use for the Boston Marathon. These formed block long, and 15 feet wide boxes that resembled lines. These lines extended all the way down to Commonwealth Avenue and were completely full. They opened the store a few minutes early I think in order to try and shorten the lines. Apple employees from all over were there to help out in bright, colorful Apple shirts. The lines moved swiftly. That being said, I didn’t get to the front of the line until about 6:40pm.
I spoke with several people about Apple and technology in general, their thoughts on an impending and much hyped 3G iPhone and other geeky topics. At one point many of the Apple employees ran by the line giving everyone a high-five, yelling a bit cheerfully and getting everyone hyped up. There were no problems in the line and everything went smoothly. Right before I got inside I met up with my friend Selina, but she wasn’t in line so she waited for me to get out.
Upon entrance to the store you were greeted by dozens of Apple employees handing out t-shirts in these awesome little origami like boxes. As far as I saw, there were no special sales and most people weren’t buying anything much. A few Redsox players showed up at one point, and rumors about Joey from Aerosmith being there at one point were around. No Steve Jobs, but that is to be expected.
The store is pretty cool itself, but like all of the mega Apple stores it’s really just ‘more of the same’ as the smaller stores. They don’t have special products that they only sell at the larger stores, or any displays that aren’t on display at others. It’s just ‘more’. One massive highlight of the store that’s hard to explain I find, is how awesome the stairwell is. I think it’s far cooler than the stairwell and elevator of the NYC store. The fact that there’s such a great view from the windows also is pretty killer over the 5th avenue store. It feels a bit like a 3-floor version of the Soho store.
I only spent a few minutes in the store. I actually wanted to buy a screen protection film for my iPhone, but I was pressed to get back outside and make my way to POPSignal.
POPSignal was great. I met up with my friend Rich Helle and walked over to Tequila Rain. As always at these events there were great people, great conversation and much card swapping on everyone’s parts. I ran into Aaron White and pulled him back on with the super-secret project that I’ve got going on (which will be revealed shortly as soon as we have a name!) and got to talk with Mark Modzelewski who I hadn’t seen in a while. I also got a bit of time to hang out with social-media superstar Chris Brogan while on my way out. One of the unexpected twists of the evening ended with seeing Chris jokingly running away from us all the way down Landsdowne Street. Afterwards we went to Eastern Standard for a few more drinks and then settled up for the night. Overall, a great time.
This weekend I’ve got to stop by Barcamp for at least a little bit. I’m not going to be able to do the entire thing since I have some other stuff going on too, but I’ll at least make an appearance.
