![]() ![]() The sleek surfaces, the cheerful employees in green T-shirts, the rows of iPhones and Apple Watches-all work collectively to reassure us that the ingredients of greatness may need to be updated, à la Coke Zero, but they will never be bastardized, à la Coke BlāK. ![]() ![]() The message of the new store, in the heart of San Francisco's high-end shopping district, serves as a warning all those who are already writing elegies for the House that Steve Built: Everything under control, nothing to worry about, we aren't anything like those losers at Yahoo. It is a place where you can consume without feeling like a consumer.ĭesigned by the firm of famed British architect Sir Norman Foster, with Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts, the Union Square store replaces an older outlet nearby on Stockton Street that opened in 2004. Shopping there suggests a kind of cosmopolitan cool, a borderless sophistication. Apple gadgets are never just phones or just watches, and its stores are never just stores, which is likely why your iOS device corrects Apple store to Apple Store. Nevertheless, this opening marks an important occasion for all who've bitten the lovely fruit of Wozniak and Jobs. What this means was never explained, probably because it has no meaning at all, the kind of corporate jargon that would have once been beneath Silicon Valley's merriest band of computer geeks. The new San Francisco store is Apple's "first global flagship," I was told by employees on each of my visits. As went Rome and Constantinople, so must go Cupertino. In the past year, Apple's invasion of China has been slow, and like Alexander the Great, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has found India difficult to conquer. For the glory of Apple is inevitably passing, the company having posted its first quarter of revenue decline since 2003, back when iPods were the size of baseball mitts. Entering the new Apple Store in San Francisco's Union Square, I felt as if I'd stumbled on some distant outpost of the late Roman Empire, a crumbling fort in the Welsh countryside that is a reminder of glories past, but also of the passing of all glories. ![]()
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