Over the past few years Apple has achieved the status of the most valuable company in the world with millions of customers visiting its stores each day but since opening up its first retail store back in 2001 its products line-up has expanded way past the Mac and iPod and now includes a full range including the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and TV amongst other accessories and devices. This means that the existing stores are now proving to be too small to accommodate the amount of people that visit them.
To combat this over the last year or so Apple has moved into its next-generation store design, spearheaded by Jony Ive and Apple’s retail head Angela Ahrendts. This new look in most cases provides wide, open spaces and the use of indoor trees with touch-sensitive sequoia wood tables and shelves which display products. Included in the new stores are large 6k resolution video screens for product marketing and various community events. There are light boxes that extend the length of the ceiling and Apple’s flagship can be found in Union Square in San Francisco which was opened in May of this year.
This next generation store has two sets of 42ft tall glass doors that slide open 40ft leaving the back and front of the store open to the street. Outside of the store is a rear public plaza supplying free Wi-Fi and seasonal musical performances.
This model of new store serves as the template for the company’s others retail outlets within the United States and about the rest of the world.
There is no doubt that Apple provides us with innovative devices that we can load with the apps that make them our own very personal items and when each new generation iPhone is due to arrive in our stores then the excitement and speculation grow.
Apple has provided us with a device that is portable and as individual as its user, and many industries have realized this, tailor-making their goods or services especially for mobile users.
If you take the gambling industry as an example then sites like Platinum Play provide their users with an environment that is both safe and secure, excellent customer support in multiple languages and banking options in different currencies. Sites that are high quality such as Platinum Play cater well for the mobile market as you can use the same passwords as you would on your laptop and also you can take advantage of the same banking options when you register with the site.
There are also a number of sites that allow you to play using Flash Player which means that you do not even have to download an app at all, couple this with superb graphics, audio and video clips to enhance game-play and this makes spending time on your mobile when you are out and about a very tempting prospect.
Once, playing on your mobile phone was a particularly awful experience as broadband connection was scratchy at the best and screens were so small that you would have needed superhuman eye-sight to see the games, however now all that has changed with internet connections becoming more reliable and faster meaning that games do not crash halfway through.
