This weekend Apple hosted the grand opening of its largest store in the world, right here in London's Covent Garden. The new store, which houses every Apple product under the sun and employs hundreds of staff members, opened its doors at 10am on Saturday to a crowd of thousands of Apple devotees.
Spread over three separate floors and composed of a blend of original brickwork and shiny glass elevators, the new store features separate chambers for every kind of Apple product, from iPads, Macs, iPods and iPhones to software and accessories.
There's also a kids area, with demos of educational software and Macs playing Lego Star Wars to indoctrinate their supple little minds. Customers can take their new products to be tinkered with by the resident Apple experts in setup room, and of course there's a great big Genius Bar.
Some of the Apple fans had queued outside for nearly 24 hours. We talked to Rosalie Williams, who held the prestigious position of being first in the queue. She'd been queuing since 10am on the previous day, an experience we could certainly relate to.
"I'm a bit tired," Rosalie admitted. "I closed my eyes during the night but didn't sleep. We have sleeping bags with us, and books for my dissertation which didn't really get read...
"Overnight you get a lot of drunk people, but in the morning you get all this, the chanting and the clapping. I think it's amazing. It's always a guy at the front for launches and store openings, and I said, 'You know what? It should be a girl.' Think different, that's what I'm saying."
CNET UK was on hand to take some photos of the launch and our guided tour around the many cavernous chambers of the new shop. Click the image above to check out our snaps and don't forget to let us know your thoughts in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.
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Comments 12
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Ian Morris 9 August, 2010 12:18
Good news everybody, there's a new Spa shop opening in Wandsworth this weekend. Shall we all go along and get ourselves a sausage roll?
billfred 9 August, 2010 12:24
Do the have "genii" to fix my sausage roll when it falls apart after my first bite?
Green 9 August, 2010 12:34
If you hold the sausage roll the wrong way you won't get any sausage, just pastry.
fillip2k 9 August, 2010 13:04
Man you've got a spa! I aspire to shop in a spa one day... Then I can whip spa products out at parties and everyone will instantly think I'm really hip and on trend....
Rich Trenholm 9 August, 2010 13:55
Aggghhh you Spar fanbois are just sheep! Greggs FTW!
Nick Hide 9 August, 2010 15:13
It might not have Spar's so-called "quality" or "value", but I much prefer Happy Shopper's open-all-hours ethos.
trick202 9 August, 2010 15:19
Great idea - leave the Spar folk to the Spar. Horses for courses and all that.
I prefer to dine on something a little more healthy - fruit for example? You stick to your sausage roll, there are lots to choose from: some are quite nice, but others will give you the s***s something rotten!
Anonymous 9 August, 2010 17:03
Haha. Microsoft wishes it could get even one tenth of the crowd at their retail stores. Microsoft and their addled fanbois are going down the tubes. The Microsoft Corporate Headquarters building foundation has already started to crumble. Cracks begin to multiply at MS corporate headquarters every time Apple opens up a new retail store and a few hundred Apple employees start clapping and shouting. No wonder why Microsoft stock has been getting downgraded lately. Steve Ballmer might have to do his Monkey Dance to keep the Windows fanbois from defecting or defecating. Tis a pity.
Anonymous 9 August, 2010 21:15
come one come all queue up for the brick with the dodgy antenna and get well ripped off
trick202 10 August, 2010 11:24
@ 21.15
But that's the beauty of choice.
If people can afford to pay for a product that they like, then that's great. There are cheaper products for people who want to spend less.
It's great that the Android platform has a wide choice in handsets - and it's also great that the mobile market has a choice of platforms and manufacturers. Would you prefer it another way?
@17.03
I've never met a MS fanboy.
To me, a fanboy is someone who loves their particular product so much they wouldn't hear a bad word about it - they are positive to the point of mania. Sadly, fans of a certain platform take a different view: that every other platform is worthless. They focus on the negatives of the other platforms - rather than the positives of their own.
Anonymous 10 August, 2010 13:48
Honestly CNET.
Photos and video of the new HTC handsets have been out for days, and yet your front screen is just wall-to-wall Apple.
Any chance you'll actually post some news, rather than yet another non-product-related Apple love story?
anonymous 21 November, 2010 22:58
Apple Store Covent Garden opening day photo tour... good read!!!