I got out early today to meet up with Doug at Coconut Point mall in Estero (Florida) to go to the grand opening of the new Apple Store. This is the first Apple store in Southwest Florida. The closest store before this store was either in Miami or Tampa. I have been to a couple of Apple stores before including Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Tampa, and Orlando however, I have never been to a grand opening ceremony. It was pretty cool. The store opened at 10am, we were there around 9am and there was already a line. By 9:30am the line was down the sidewalk (Coconut Point is an outside mall). It was pretty shocking to see how many people came out to the opening. I wonder if it was because of the free t-shirt? This Apple store sports no checkout counters. OK I Lied there was one if you were going to pay with cash. If you decided to pay with credit all you have to do is go to any Apple sales agent and they can check you out right there with there Windows PDA. The best part is that they can either print out your receipt or email it to you or do both. It was pretty cool. The only problem was that the sales agent said they are having some small problems with the system. We jokingly said it runs windows right? He proceeded to turn over the PDA and to our surprise there was the Windows CE logo! It was pretty funny. The store was set up nice and the check out experience was amazing. I haven’t seen this at any other apple store have you? All in all it was worth it, and I think there is another Apple store opening soon at Waterside shops in Naples, FL. I’ll be there for that one too!

Check out the pictures I took!