Apple’s first retail store in San Francisco opens Saturday. The San Francisco store joins other flagship store locations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Tokyo. The One Stockton Street location opens at 10 AM Pacific Time.
Sporting a stainless steel and glass exterior design, the San Francisco store’s interior features an all-glass staircase and other amenities. It’s located at the corner of Stockton and Ellis, a stone’s throw from Market Street and only a couple of blocks from San Francisco’s famed Union Square. Apple let the press in on Thursday for a look inside, and Macworld’s own Jason Snell wrote about it in his editor’s blog.
The San Francisco store sports a 14-seat Genius Bar where visitors can ask Mac experts about their systems; there’s also an Internet café where customers can use Macs equipped with iSight video cameras to video-chat, or check e-mail. A 39-seat theater provides visitors with a place to attend workshops, view demos and more.
The first 2,500 people to visit the store will get a commemorative t-shirt to mark the occasion, but Snell also noted that early visitors to the Apple Store’s Saturday opening are being given the chance to buy what Apple is calling the “Lucky Bag.” It’s a grab bag of sorts that costs US$250. “The Lucky Bag is a mysterious bag full of seven or eight products, all but one of them from Apple,” wrote Snell. “Those products have a combined retail value of between $600 and $1000.”
Make sure to check Snell’s blog entry for more details, including photos of the new store’s interior.