Belfast Apple Store opens on Saturday (1 Viewer)

[frambosenshmak]

From what i can gather the apple store seems to be mainly targetted at people who don't know a whole lot about Macs/iPods, people who want to feel comfortable asking simple questions and want to use and see the products in the flesh.

like any computer shop really.

These people wouldn't necessarily want to drive 2 hours to do that and also wouldn't feel comfortable ordering blind from apple.ie

people do it for IKEA (and petrol, and shopping) still knowing that there is a store opening here in 2009. In general most people are consumerist whores so the idea of zipping up the motorway for a 'day out' in orange country to see a real life apple store is too hard for them to resist.

Also most apple stores have a walk in troubleshooting/repair area. I could see a decent demand for that given the amount of people every day looking for ipod/mac repairs.

I reckon we'll see a store in Dublin within a few years.

i really hope we do, because the second rate camera and suburban computer shop apple dealers have been taking the piss here for years selling dated stock at full price and charging a fortune for second rate mac repairs (one of the hardest things to find has been a reliable, reasonably priced mac repair centre that actually knows what its doing and can fix the problem).

but as we know apple like to take a very prominent store position in any city so some nice landmark building frontage on either grafton street or o connell street would have to become available with rent on their terms. both streets are renowned for ridiculously overpriced rents and apple could very well attest to dragging more footfall to any street they land on as leverage for lower rent. Its all dependent on dublin city council looking to attract them here.

I'm actually really surprised at the goverments business/jobs lobby not targetting apple earlier to open stores in ireland seeing as they have a factory manufacturing presence in Cork. but then again most government and industry bodies tend to leave unencrypted laptops lying at busstops so they're not so clued in as we would hope.