The sponge is in the Apple Store at the Fashion Mall in Las Vegas. The mall is huge and it has been opened for about 20 minutes.  Presently the store is about 60%.  Mostly people are looking at the iMacs with a few at the iPhones.  There are plenty of sales people eager to help folks.  Those who are talking to customers are explaining the various features of the Macs.

We need more reports from across the country in the next 30 days.  The VG in Rancho Cucamonga was pretty busy on Friday according to my son who was out shopping with my wife. The mall there was packed.  Apparently the manager of the mall said they were about 8% busier then previous year by 10 a.m. that day.  Hopefully these type of reports will continue throughout the rest of the holiday season.

I was just in a best buy in frederick, md. Sunday evening 6pm
Whole place was very quiet. No one was in the computer section, apple or otherwise.

I was in the VG Apple store last night.  The mall was fairly busy on a cold CA night.  The Apple Store was about 25% full with fluctuating traffic increases.  Saw and heard a customer ask about buying an iMac and placing it under the Christmas Tree for Christmas morning and wondering if he could return it if the person wanted a different model.  Saw and heard an associate explain to a family the price and minutes of owning an iPhone.

Lots of associates available to help with no wait to get an answer questioned.  Almost bought a game but decided against it after seeing that I could buy it online for $14 cheaper.

The sponge is at the VG store.  The place is about 50% to 75% full.  Lots of folks checking out the iMac.  A guy next to me is about to buy a 21”.

Most people are looking at the MacBooks and iPod touches.  No one is looking at the Nanos.  Every associate is busy.

I will attempt to keep an eye on sales and see how many units I see going out the door.

I popped into the Coconut Point, Estero branch on Saturday. Left glass door had been replaced with a black wooden cover and the whole left window had been smashed with something large - a shattered area of around 6 inches with impressive cracks radiating out from it. Looks like someone didn’t get what they wanted for Christmas and decided to attempt to grab it for themselves over the new year.

Actually having done a quick search on Google News - it all happened before Christmas - 17th of December with 30ks worth of merchandise stolen.

Computers Stolen From Mall Customers

by MissionViejoDispatch.com on December 31, 2009

  Three suspects were arrested Tuesday for following a customer who made a computer purchase at the Apple Store in The Shops At Mission Viejo. They were charged with burglarizing the computer from the victim’s vehicle at his next stop.

  The Sheriff’s Department announced the successful sting operation today. The suspects followed a Sheriff’s investigator who made a fictitious purchase after Deputies received profiles of the men from other agencies where similar thefts occurred.  The investigator drove to a pre-arranged staging area where he parked his car. The suspects, from Los Angeles, soon broke into the car and were immediately arrested.

  A previous trap by Deputies was foiled when an unsuspecting victim returned to his car just as the suspects were about to break in to his auto, causing them to abort their alleged attempt.

  A total of 28 counts were filed for burglaries in Orange, L.A., and Ventura counties.

When Apple stores get robbed, I see that as a positive.  Thieves appreciate hot products with good resale value.

Talked to a store employee at the sandwich place across the street from the Apple Store.  He said they were much busier this last Christmas Season then the 2008.  Based on his personal knowledge they sold more 27” inch iMacs then 21” iMacs.  It was 50/50 between the MacBooks and the Pros.

I think Apple will impress us with their 1st quarter numbers.

The bad news my hard drive crashed on my 2 year old iMac - the good news I bought a 27” iMac today.  Two pretty cool things -

1 - the store was mobbed (not robbed).  I mean it was very crowded and the tech told me it was slow relative to the holiday season.

2 - Apple makes it beyond easy to take a new mac, connect your external drive with your time capsule back up in an extremely seamless process.  Imagine doing that with a PC (note the only problem was with Fusion, a PC application).

runedge - 03 January 2010 11:29 PM

The bad news my hard drive crashed on my 2 year old iMac - the good news I bought a 27” iMac today.  Two pretty cool things -

1 - the store was mobbed (not robbed).  I mean it was very crowded and the tech told me it was slow relative to the holiday season.

2 - Apple makes it beyond easy to take a new mac, connect your external drive with your time capsule back up in an extremely seamless process.  Imagine doing that with a PC (note the only problem was with Fusion, a PC application).

I swear the last batch of Hard Drives in the older iMacs were crap.  You are 5th person I have heard of who had their iMac Drive fail.  I have owned Macs all my life and this is the first time it crashed on me.  I wish I had Time Capsule.  I still need to send my old drive into some guys in New Jersey to retrieve my data and it will cost me $800   My wife bought me the latest Time Capsule and I sleep so much better at night.

What I like about the Mac Stores is that they are full of young kids.  They are constantly playing with all the Apple Products.  I don’t care if they buy them, because I know when they are old enough to influence their parents or buy for themselves, an Apple product has a decent shot of being bought.  The time they spend in the Store is part of the introduction process to the best products in the world.

If you’ve been tracking my other posts, you’ll remember I was at CES. Since I was busy, it wasn’t until Monday that I started looking to buy my magic mouse. Unfortunately, all the tech weenies bought them up - all three Apple stores were out. I called back Tuesday - nothing, “maybe a week”. I called Weds, two stores were out, the third didn’t even pick up the phone. So I walked over to that store and there were STACKS of them, maybe 30-40.

I’d shipped one to a friend from Amazon, it’s still on back order, and the Apple online store says fulfillment in 7-10 days. The Apple store folks say they can’t keep them in stock.

While I was there I started running the Apple TV through the paces. A couple from Detroit started asking me questions, like how do you control it (iPhone, which they had), how do you rip your DVDs into iTunes (20 minute tutorial where they were taking notes), how do we get everything off our PC onto mac, etc. By the time I was ready to check out the associates were offering to give me their neckstrap/business card thingies.

The store was busy but not full. Busier by at least 100% than any other store in the Fashion Show mall. Most of the activity was around the iMacs, Macbook pros, and iPhones/Touches. Not much activity around the nanos or the white Macbooks. The new polycarbonate macbook has a nice rounded feel, and trendy rubber bezel around the screen. I can see this as a perfect late high-school, early college machine.

I also noticed there was no Mac Mini. I’m probably going to get the server version, but will wait until after the announcement day or another week to see if they include the i5 chip in a refresh.

It was interesting that they didn’t even have one on the floor, however, given that the rest of the desktop space seemed kind of sparsely populated.  Almost like they were moving product around to see if they could fit something else into the layout…