On August 17, Apple will add Wellington Green in West Palm Beach, Florida to its already established Miami and Tampa locations. August 31 will see two retail openings, one in Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi, Michigan (a suburb of Detroit) and the other store will be located in the Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa, WI (a suburb of Milwaukee).
The Detroit and Milwaukee locations will also have a draw for the Digital Lifestyle Collection. The drawing, available to all customers that visit the store on opening day, includes an iMac with Combo drive, an iPod MP3 player (5GB model), a Nikon Coolpix 775 Digital Camera, an Epson Stylus Photo Printer 820 and a Canon ZR40 Video Camera. Approximate retail value of the sweepstakes is US$3,000. While the sweepstakes will be available at most retail openings this year, it will not be available in Florida due to laws governing such events in that State.
July saw the opening of Apple’s two biggest retail stores to date — SoHo, in New York, which was announced during Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote and opened the next day, and The Grove, which opened last week in Los Angeles.
Apple did something a little different with the opening of The Grove last weekend. On Saturday afternoon, Apple hosted a skateboarding event on top of an eight story parking garage adjacent to the store. The event was more than a sideshow for the 500 or so people that watched, however — it was Apple’s first live Made on a Mac event.
While most Made on a Mac events take place in the store theaters, Apple decided to use sunny L.A. to test another way to show its customers how Macs can help them in their everyday lives.
“We had over 500 people come up and watch our first live Made on a Mac event,” said Olivo. “Made on a Mac events typically show how creative professionals do their jobs using Macs — the intent of this event was to show families how they can take a fun, family event, like skateboarding with their kids, and in a very short period of time turn that into an iMovie.”
The Grove also saw a few celebrities visit the store. Adam Arkin (Chicago Hope, West Wing) and Thomas Gibson (Darhma and Greg) were a couple of the celebrities to show up to see the new Apple store.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to play with Jaguar yet and you live near a store, Olivo said that each store is running the new Apple OS on one machine in the home section.
Mac OS 10.2 is due on August 24 and an Apple representative told MacCentral today that, “Apple is on target to deliver Jaguar to customers later this month.”