Tag: friendly

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Greensboro Joins the Cult of Mac

After several false starts, months (even years) of waiting, and disputes with their retail neighbors, the new Greensboro Apple Store finally opened this past weekend. Although I’ve done my fair share of waiting in line for openings, this time things were a bit different. The level of excitement and enthusiasm as we stood in line Saturday morning was surreal. We arrived a little after 7am and were about 20 people from the front of the line. We came prepared and dressed in layers to keep warm.

The morning was spent swapping Mac stories and meeting new people. The day before a group of my friends and I from the Iconfactory stopped by the unopened store and happened to run into a WXII News crew. They had asked us why we were looking forward to having our own Apple Store and we even managed to get in a plug for Twitterrific.

When the moment of truth arrived and the doors finally opened, we were greeted like rock stars courtesy of the whoops and cheers from the store employees. After running down the line and high-fiving over 20 people, I can start to understand why some think Mac users are part of a geeky “cult”. We browsed the hardware, and Talos even ended up becoming the 1st official paying customer in Greensboro. After about 30 minutes we made our way to the exit, went outside and was greeted with our first real glimpse of the true size of the line waiting to get in. Checking out the photo essay from the News & Record it’s easy to see just how many people had come for the opening. Absolutely incredible.

While the store opening itself was a wonderful and throughly geeky experience, I’m more gratified to finally have a place locally where I’ll be able to go and purchase new Apple hardware, learn new software and have repairs made. The staff at the Apple store are always on call to help users with any need and I plan to avail myself of their hospitality every chance I get. From all of us, to all of you, welcome to Greensboro, Apple!

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Greensboro Apple Store Opening Set

According to an unofficial announcement in the News & Record, the date for the opening of the Greensboro Apple Store has been set as Sat., February 21st. The new Apple store at the Shops at Friendly Center is reported to be North Carolina’s largest and promises to be a Mecca for Apple fans across the triad. All this is conjecture of course since there has been no official word from the Apple retail website.

Center hours are from 10am – 6pm on Saturdays, so I think it’s safe to assume the new store will open at 10am that day. I and a bunch of the guys from work will definitely be attending the opening so perhaps we’ll see you there. Just watch for the gaggle of geeks wearing the Iconfactory t-shirts. Just one more week folks!

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Greensboro Apple Store Update

Yep, it’s still there and it’s still being worked on. The only visible difference on the facade of the future home of the Greensboro Apple Store is the corporate logo and URL that’s been added in the past week. My friends Anthony, Louie and David managed to sneak a peek inside when nobody was looking and reported that the Genius Bar logo is on the wall, and the interior is coming along. They said it seemed “big”, but I’m dubious since there’s no displays, shelves, etc yet.

At any rate, if the word on the street is true, hopefully sometime in February we’ll have a new place to go and buy shiny new Apple hardware in Greensboro. All of us at the Iconfactory can hardly wait. You can be sure we’ll be right there in the front of the line when the store opens. If you want to see the latest pictures of the store, head over to my Flickr page for some pictures that no one but Apple junkies would find thrilling.

UPDATE: A little bird, no not that one, told me that the Greensboro Apple store should be done and open by Valentine’s Day. Keeping my finger’s crossed!

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Greensboro Apple Store Update

Back at the end of July I took a picture of what I was sure was the future home of the new Greensboro Apple Store. Unlike my first guess, I was sure this time I had the actual location of the retail space and submitted it to The Unoffical Apple Weblog. The fine TUAW folks indulged my Jimmy Olsen fantasies and posted the picture to the cheers of Triad Apple fans. Unfortunately, last week Talos found out that the store in the picture will in fact be a new William Sonoma and not the Apple Store. So much for that Pulitzer Prize I was gunning for. Now comes this video from Greensboro WXII News 12 stating that the Greensboro Apple Store is indeed delayed until February of 2009. A major bummer to be sure, but if what the reporter in the piece is saying is true, then we have a good reason for the delay. I’ll take a larger Apple Store if it means we have to wait a bit longer. Must. Be. Patient.