Big Crowds Queue Up To Celebrate Grand Opening of Belfast Apple Store

The grand opening of the Apple Store Victoria Square in Belfast took place this weekend, on Saturday September 20. The BBC was on hand, and reports, “Hundreds of people have queued outside the new Apple store in Belfast for its first day of opening, with some waiting all night to be the first through the doors.” One of the first in line sported an Apple tattoo. Why? Because he was a graphic designer, and thinks that the Apple logo is one of the most elegant and beautiful ever designed. Another customer expressed great excitement at the first Apple store in Northern Ireland.The excitement was palpable, even when watching the videos of the event. You can view BBC News’ “Queues at Belfast Apple store opening,” BBC.co.uk

Alan in Belfast, a blogger who was at the event, writes, “The first hardy souls started the queue before 11pm last night. Matthew, Michael, Stuart, Wayne and Karl. Another few arrived after midnight (better prepared with camp seats!). And then it was early morning – 5am-ish – when the rest of the queue started to form.”

To those of us used to Apple Store openings, all the regular ingredients were there: the excited staff in their aqua, or orange, or black t-shirts (although the BBC video shows one person — staffer or customer? — wearing a “Steve Jobs for President” t-shirt), the count-down, the clapping and cheering, the gifts being handed out to the customers. But somehow, no matter how many times the events are witnessed, the excitement doesn’t diminish.

Highcross Grand Opening 4 September

The new Apple Store at Highcross will have its Grand Opening celebration on Thursday, September 4, opening its doors at 10:00 a.m. The store is located at the Upper Mall at Highcross, in Leicester. As part of the Grand Opening celebration, Apple is featuring a sweepstakes as well as a variety of presentations and workshops — all free and open to the public. The first 1,000 people through the doors on September 4 will be given a free Apple T-shirt. The Grand Opening Sweepstakes is especially exciting. Enter to win what Apple calls a Digital Lifestyle Collection. This includes a 13-inch black MacBook and a silver 4 GB iPod nano. There is no purchase necessary in order to enter. You simply submit the entry before 5 p.m. on Sunday, September 7 to be included in the sweepstakes.

For full details and up to the minute information, see http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/highcross/

New Apple Store in Belfast

James Stinson reports for The Irish Times that Apple is about to open its store in Victoria Square.
ifoAppleStore provides more information, “The interior of the store is nearing completion, and behind a construction barricade the all-glass faade has been erected. The store occupies space U5, on the upper ground-floor of the complex in the Northern Ireland capital of half a million residents. The store will be the first in Northern Ireland, and will open before the holidays, 2008.”

For a look at the store under construction, see http://www.ifoapplestore.com/

For those interested in applying for a position, see http://www.apple.com/jobs/uk/store/

Apple To Open Leicester Store

A new UK Apple store will open in Leicester on 4 September. Located in the Highcross Leicester development, the store will be 577 square metres, and will supplement the other Apple retail stores already in the same general geographic area: Birmingham, Manchester, Solihull and Sheffield.

Apple is also hiring staff for stores in Belfast, Bristol, Liverpool and White City, London.

Apple Special MacBook and MacBook Pro Offers

Apple has some great savings on MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s these are not refurbished models but stock left from previous models.

Starting with the MacBook:

13-inch MacBook (White) - 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo - 80GB Hard Drive
13.3-inch glossy widescreen display
1280 x 800 resolution
1GB memory (2×512MB SODIMMs)
80GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Built-in iSight camera
£649.00

Next are 3 MacBook Pro models:

MacBook Pro, 15.4 inch, 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2Gb Memory
120GB Hdd
8 x SuperDrive DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT Graphics
iSight Camera
£1,099.00

MacBook Pro, 15.4 inch, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
15.4-inch widescreen display
2GB memory
160GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
Built-in iSight Camera
£1,199.00

MacBook Pro, 17-inch, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
17-inch widescreen display
2GB memory
160GB hard drive
8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
Built-in iSight Camera
£1,599.00

These superb offers are only available through the Apple Store UK and only while stocks last, hurry before they sell out!

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