Inside Apple’s Redesigned Fifth Avenue Flagship Store

Lance Ulanoff, writing for Lifewire:

Apple’s business may be transforming from one driven almost entirely by a passionate devotion to beautiful hardware to one idolizing code and, especially, services, but the reimagined Apple Fifth Ave. flagship Store in Manhattan is a reminder that the physical still matters very much to the California-based company.

The 13-year-old store, which sits at the base of Central Park and is instantly recognizable thanks to its iconic 32-foot glass cube with a suspended Apple logo inside of it, has undergone a massive, 2-year-long reinvention project that somehow maintains the core essence of what drew hundreds of people to the store to line up for their first iPhones more than a decade ago.

Looks pretty cool — the skylights that double as benches on the plaza are clever.

(As an aside, I think it’s wrong to frame Apple’s push into services as a transition. Apple has sort of sold that line to Wall Street, and I’ve seen several analysts buy it, but it’s just not true. Apple is as devoted to its hardware business as ever — the push into services is an expansion, not a transition.)

★ Thursday, 19 September 2019