This MacBook at the 14th St. Apple Store in New York could load Facebook just fine. Taken, naturally, on my iPhone.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)NEW YORK--It involved three shopping districts, two subway lines, and a whole lot of walking in the freezing cold. But I completed my mission to hit up all three Manhattan Apple stores to see if it was true that the retail outlets' computer stations had blocked access to Facebook because too many people were using the popular social network to waste time. (Editors' note: at publish time, the link above was experiencing a network time-out error.)
The verdict: An Apple Store representative told me in a phone call later on Friday, "We have not blocked Facebook from our stores." But it looks like some stores may have put a block in place on their own accord.
Apple retail stores are famously stocked with Internet-accessible workstations that, while intended to be used as demonstrations for prospective buyers, are also free for the public to use. That's led to some problems with nonshoppers monopolizing the machines and taking up space: in mid-2007, Apple blocked access to MySpace, which was then the world's biggest social-networking site.
I hit up Apple's Fifth Avenue flagship store in midtown (you know, the big glass cube), the 14th Street store in the Meatpacking District, and the store on Prince Street in the downtown neighborhood of SoHo.
At the Fifth Avenue store, I was able to access Facebook from one laptop, but on another, the facebook.com domain redirected to an Apple Store page. In the Meatpacking District store, meanwhile, two laptops loaded Facebook without a problem, but a desktop computer brought up a message explaining that the parental controls feature in the Safari browser had blocked it.
In the SoHo store, meanwhile, I had no problem accessing Facebook from any of the random computers I checked out. Ironically, it was in the SoHo store that was populated by the most people who clearly weren't customers; by the time I swung by, it was lunch hour at a local high school, and the computers were occupied by teenagers checking out games and music.
So, what it looks like is that even if there is no nationwide ban of Facebook at Apple stores as some had speculated, a few individual stores have chosen to go their own route.
This post was updated at 1:05 p.m. PT with comment from Apple.
The start of the Apple Store line snaking around the front of the store. You can't actually see most of the line, as it's off to the left; security was in the process of crowd control.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)
Fanboy alert! iPod and MacBook Pro spotted in line...
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)It was freezing cold and snow was starting to come down, but at 2:30 p.m. EST there were already several hundred people waiting in line at the new Apple Store on West 14th St. in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, which which opens at 6 p.m. One estimate put the crowd at about 600 people with several hours still to go.
The first person in line, a high schooler, had showed up at 1 a.m. That's not a typo. He told CNET News.com that by 3:30 or 4 a.m., more people started to join him. But the line really started to take off in the early afternoon, as students were let out for the weekend (some schools in the area close early on Fridays) and grown-up Apple fans cleared out of their offices in favor of lining up in the freezing cold.
Yeah, here's the end of the line. With three hours to go.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)Apple events are known for generating long lines well in advance--just look at the lines that formed for the Leopard operating system and the highly anticipated iPhone. But there's no product being released this time--it's just the opening of a new store.
So why wait? Well, Apple's given some incentives. "Come celebrate with us this Friday as we'll be giving away thousands of limited-edition posters and commemorative T-shirts," the store's Web site invited tantalizingly. "You might even win one of several great surprise gifts such as an iMac, a MacBook Pro, or an iPod Touch."
Sweet! Count me in!
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)As we've seen with many launch events that draw lengthy queues, many of the people in line were "tag-teaming" with friends, one waiting while the other went to grab food, coffee, or just headed for an indoor space to thaw up. And one local business was capitalizing on the freezing masses: the T Salon, located in the nearby Chelsea Market shopping complex, was distributing free cups of chai to anyone in line.
Also spotted: An establishment across the street, Comix Bar, was pricing apple martinis at half price for happy hour in celebration of the Apple Store launch. Good to know Jobs & Co. are welcome in the neighborhood.
Please don't wear five-inch heels on these stairs.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)A friend of mine once told me that one of the most striking characteristics of the Manhattan mini-neighborhood known as the Meatpacking District was the proliferation of "baby giraffes."
Basically, what he meant were the hordes of impossibly skinny young women in mile-high stiletto heels, teetering through the cobblestone streets of the party-heavy neighborhood as though they were juvenile specimens of Giraffa camelopardalis who couldn't quite control their pole-like legs. (In case you couldn't tell, the Meatpacking District's warehouses have largely given way to pricey designer boutiques and the nightclubs that keep Us Weekly's readership happy).
But those Giraffe Girls had better watch out, because the nerds are invading their watering hole.
On Friday night at 6 p.m., the doors will formally open to the third and largest Apple retail store in Manhattan, at the northernmost end of the Meatpacking District (it's on the corner of West 14th Street and 9th Avenue, to be more specific). Unlike its Fifth Avenue sibling, the West 14th Street Apple store won't be open 24/7--it closes at midnight, which might as well be the Meatpacking District equivalent of three o'clock in the afternoon. It's probably for the better. Steve Jobs has enough on his hands; he doesn't need to have to deal with dubious lawsuits from drunk girls in stilettos who've tumbled down that three-story glass staircase while trying to go hit on the guys behind the Genius Bar (they get way cuter after four cosmopolitans!)
The geeks have already taken roost at the old Port Authority building two blocks north, now home to New York's sprawling Google headquarters. Now they've staked a second claim with the Apple Store. Don't hold your breath, fellow techies, but if Tenjune gets replaced by a late-night arcade or something, we'll know the transformation is complete.
Click here for the rest of CNET News.com's fanboy-friendly photo gallery.
Here, kitty kitty kitty! Rain-soaked Apple nerds wait for Leopard.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)NEW YORK--On Friday afternoon at the hour that Apple launched its latest operating system, Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, it was pouring rain in Manhattan. It was also windy and chilly. That didn't stop several hundred people from lining up outside the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue to get their hands on the new software, huddled underneath Gore-Tex jackets and umbrellas.
"It's the cult," commented another reporter who had also been covering the water-saturated event.
The line for Leopard appeared to be divided fairly evenly between rabid Apple fans and shoppers who'd figured they could stop by and pick it up quickly--and indeed, come launch time, the line moved fast as customers were ushered into a gauntlet of Apple Store employees (much like the iPhone launch in June) and directed straight to the cash registers when the doors opened at 6 p.m.
"It's a happening," said first-in-liner Bob Greenlees, a twenty-something student at the nearby Cardozo School of Law, when I asked him why he'd bothered to wait amidst inclement weather for an operating system that could easily have been pre-ordered online and delivered to his front door. "It's one of those things. It's Apple, it's Fifth Avenue, it's a flagship store. And it's an opportunity to be in line for something without waiting for three days."
Greenlees, after posing for a photo with his new purchase, said that he was going to go straight home and install it. He'd been in line since about 2:30 p.m.
The line went to the corner and around the block to the intersection of 58th Street and Madison Avenue.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)"I came for the free t-shirt," said Steven Miranda, a Manhattan College student who was ninth in line. The Apple Store was offering t-shirts to the first 500 people who showed up, and for hardcore Apple fans, those shirts were a coveted prize. I asked Miranda and his friends whether they agreed with Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg's assertion that Leopard was "evolutionary, not revolutionary."
"Compared to Vista, it's revolutionary!" chimed in one Apple fan who was just ahead of Miranda in line. Indeed, the Microsoft-taunting was hardly under the radar. One person in line was wearing a t-shirt that bore the Windows logo along with the caption "Hasta la Vista."
For the two hours prior to the Leopard launch, the normally 24/7 Fifth Avenue store had been closed in preparation--my personal theory is Apple closed the store for a longer span of time than it needed to, to assure that an adequate queue would form in anticipation, but I'm sure Apple's not about to confirm that to me.
In addition to Leopard t-shirts, buyers were also treated to free umbrellas as they were ushered into the store. Nice move, Apple. "Keep the Leopard dry!" an Apple Store employee shouted. "Cats don't like water!"
But that raises a very serious question. Now that Apple has let Leopard out of its cage, following in the tracks of Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger, the big question is--which cat's next?
My money's on Ocelot.
NEW YORK--At about 1 p.m. EDT in midtown Manhattan, I overheard a group of suit-clad thirtysomething men talking as they waited to cross Madison Avenue.
"You know, leopards are solitary animals," one of them said. The other three or four continued musing on the characteristics of the large exotic felines, and I figured that it was actually part of a conversation about Apple's latest operating system, which launches Friday at 6 p.m. I thought, wow, if fratty midtown office types are talking about Mac OS X 10.5, there must be a huge line of fanboys at the Apple store!
Wrong. There was almost no sign of a major product launch at the 24-hour Apple store on Fifth Avenue, besides a few signs and posters announcing Leopard's advent. The store was still a mob scene, of course--in that touristy shopping district just south of Central Park, it always is. But there was no buzz factor like there had been with the crazy iPhone launch in June.
Apple Store customers try out Leopard at the Fifth Avenue store in NYC.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks)Apple retail employees told reporters that the store would be closed from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. for preparations, and that when the doors finally opened, there would be "demos all night long."
For an idea of what the scene might be like, they told the press to look up the Japanese launch of Leopard the previous night, which apparently had eager buyers lined up around the block. Then, clearly uncomfortable about saying too much, they said to contact company public-relations representatives instead and encouraged the press to test out the new operating system--it was already installed on all the demo computers at the store.
A few minutes later, reporters were informed that Apple retail employees had just been told not to speak to the press any more, until Leopard's launch at 6 p.m.
Meow.
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