Apple opened its first retail stores in McLean, VA and Glendale, CA on Saturday. Reader Daniel Davis has posted several pictures from the McLean grand opening on his Web site. Apple has also posted pictures and a video tour with Steve Jobs of the big day. C|Net has also posted an article.
Go2Mac reader Mark W. Gray from Van Nuys, CA send us his impression of the Glendale Apple Store:
I thought the Apple Store opening would be a big deal, but I had no idea… I drove down to the Glendale Galleria to take a look and found a line an hour and a half long to get in. You could see most of it through the windows, and the security people didn’t bother the people like me who just hovered around the entrance. I didn’t wait in the line to get in, but it wasn’t much of a disappointment. Apple had some friendly people circulating through the line out in the mall with the new iBooks. That might have been more impressive than what was inside. (This is what I had really came to see anyway.) The guy handed me this beautiful, slim little computer with the web browser running via an Airport in the store; no strings attached. I went to my own web site and played my Flash cartoon. The thing just plain works. We non-line waiters passed it around, closed it, opened it; it worked beautifully. We even went to the apple site about the store we couldn’t get into and watched Steve Jobs give a video tour. If we could have found a store webcam, it would have been the perfect product demo. I also finally got to see the big Cinema Display (in the front window) which I’d heard about for so long. Now if I only had the money or the need…
