Filed under: Retail, Features, Leopard
Leopard Day in Knoxville
It's finally here: Leopard launch day! So I headed down to my local Apple store in Knoxville to join in the fun (and pick up shirt along with a nice new 24" iMac). I thought I'd take you along for the ride. As per usual with the Apple Store, things were run to near perfection. By 6pm the line was well down that wing of the Mall, and when the doors opened they just started handing out shirts to everyone in line. I got there a little late and so was standing in line for about 20 minutes before I got my shirt. They even sent out an Apple Store employee with a cart full of bottled water to hand out to folks in line. There was an impressive number of Apple Store employees, some of them apparently on the store floor for the first time that night.
Once in the store, we entered another rapidly moving line. We were met at the head of the line by an Apple Store employee who asked what we wanted, then scurried off to get the iMac. They came back, took our credit card with their little PDA-like devices and we were off. As you can see in the gallery, many other folks were playing with the display Macs, talking to Apple Store employees, and generally enjoying the up-beat vibe of the Leopard launch.
As I said before, I was absolutely impressed by how well run the entire thing was. Even though there were hundreds of people there, we were back in the car and headed home by 6:45pm with our precious new iMac. My biggest surprise is that they weren't hawking external hard drives more. Sure enough when I opened the box of the iMac there was fresh copy of Leopard waiting to be installed.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
da4 said 9:28PM on 10-26-2007
the line at North Michigan Ave in Chicago went one entire block east and then easily half a block south - many hundreds of people, maybe a thousand. The entire store was there to open the doors and cheer everyone walking in (the famous Apple "Moment" which is, as someone who has been one of those employees, quite a feeling) and the line began moving rapidly.
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John P. said 9:32PM on 10-26-2007
There were female Apple employees at 12 Oaks wearing Leopard tails & ears. Not too sure if that was mandated by Apple or not :D
The store was packed, security guards on hand, a dedicated line to purchase Leopard (I don't know i it was to buy anything else). Otherwise, the entire store was setup for demo stations, with an Apple employee at every mac or so showing a different feature off.
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JGO said 9:29PM on 10-26-2007
What size is the shirt?
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Jt Hollister said 9:15PM on 10-26-2007
Nice!!! I just got back from opening day at The Gateway in Salt Lake City, Utah....I got a T-Shirt too, in fact I was the first person to walk out of the store!!! :D The first Utahn with Leopard! (excluding those bums who got it on their new computers from there today)
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OSXkitty said 9:24PM on 10-26-2007
Okay, this is bizarre. I stopped by the Omaha store a little over an hour ago, and who did I see but "John," the guy from the iPhone and Leopard training videos! Does anyone know which store he actually works in? Or has he been in Nebraska all this time? (I find that hard to believe...) He's kind of a hottie!
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Luigi193 said 9:24PM on 10-26-2007
The 24'' iMac is a freaking awesome Computer....
I say this while typing on my 24 inch imac.
I don't know how it happened, we got it 2 weeks after it launched...but we qualified for the 10$ upgrade!!!! It was so tempting to download the gold master a week ago........
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Mav said 9:25PM on 10-26-2007
Any indication of a 10% off on your iMac purchase, Mat?
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nanodalek said 9:26PM on 10-26-2007
In Ardmore , PA (Suburb of Philly) we got cups of coffee and yellow poncho's. I guess if the zombies hit before 10.6 we'll get radiation med's an Apple shotgun.
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Philip said 12:08AM on 10-27-2007
Holy crap, my wife and I are in a couple of those pictures! Just got Leopard installed on my nice new iMac. Sweet!
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John S. said 9:46PM on 10-26-2007
That's great Matt. I'm in one of your photos -- my back at least. It was a lot of fun. I got my t-shirt, which I am going to give to my stepson for Christmas (along with a shiny copy of Leopard).
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Dr. Webster said 9:53PM on 10-26-2007
I was at the Roseville (Minnesota) store for the launch. I got there about an hour ahead of time, and was about 20th in line. Instead of handing out shirts as we got in, they only let the first 50 or so people in the store, and handed them out as people left (and then let a few more people into the store). An hour and a half later, there were still about 40 people in line, waiting to get in. There were a LOT of employees there, about 30 or so -- and the Roseville store is a pretty small one. And, too, a number of them seemed to be working their first shift there.
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Steve said 10:15PM on 10-26-2007
The shirt was size Large. According to the employee, no other sizes were available.
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Gideon said 10:21PM on 10-26-2007
Something I noticed after installing Leopard was the lack of any ability to modify the port settings.
Perhaps the fine people at TUAW can show us how to set these up in Leopard, as things like WoW and Bittorrent really require this.
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tim said 10:22PM on 10-26-2007
i drove through an hour of traffic to race to the u-village store in seattle...TO FIND THEY ARE CLOSED FOR RENEVATIONS!!!
WHO THE HECK CLOSES THEIR MAIN STORE IN THE MOST TECH CITY IN AMERICA ON THE DAY OF ONE OF THEIR BIGGEST PRODUCT RELEASES?!
it boggles the mind enough for me to show my frustration in all caps. however, the mac store was out there handing flyers for their 'release party' down the street. thank you mac store. i hope someone in charge of the u-village apple store gets fired!
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Angel said 10:23PM on 10-26-2007
At the Apple store here in Sacramento, CA they had sizes ranging from small to XXL. I managed to snag myself 2 XL t-shirts ;)
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tim said 10:23PM on 10-26-2007
OH! and instead of free shirts, we got free stuffed leopard toys....id rather get a shirt, but somethings better than nothing. they also had good deals on extra stuff if you buy leopard.
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Lisa Hoover said 10:36PM on 10-26-2007
@ Mat - Great pics! What's that one Genius dude have on his head? Some kind of blue headband.
@ OSXkitty - Um, yeah he is. Road trip to Nebraska.
@Luigi193 - I got my (awesome) 24" right around the same time. How did you qualify? (My Spotted One will be here tomorrow morning but I'm wondering what I overlooked)
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Ed said 10:44PM on 10-26-2007
Mat, we share a local apple store. (I live in oak ridge)
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Michael Mendoza said 10:59PM on 10-26-2007
I went to the store in La Cantera in San Antonio, TX and I had a blast!! I can only imagine how much fun it was up there. I just finished installed Leopard on my MacBook Pro and am installing it on the iMac 24" 2.4 GHZ 1 GB RAM that I bought at the store today. Congrats Mat! You made an awesome choice!
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Mykal Bloom said 11:58PM on 10-26-2007
lol, I love the empty Dell kiosk.
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