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Apple today
premiered this week's opening of Apple Piazza Liberty in the center of Milan, Italy. Set to open its doors on Thursday, the retail location features a dramatic glass fountain that serves as the entrance to the store and a backdrop to the large outdoor amphitheater.
The piazza, clad in Beola Grigia, a stone used throughout Milan, will be open to the public 24 hours a day and will host special events year-round amongst 14 Gleditsia Sunburst trees planted in the area.
Apple Piazza Liberty will host a variety of Today at Apple sessions, taking in photography, filmmaking, music creation, coding, design and more. This September, Apple Piazza Liberty will also host a special month-long Milan Series, where 21 local artists will share their visions for the creative future of Milan, as previewed on a special
Apple.com web page.
There will be live music in the location's amphitheater on the opening night by musician LIM, a "crazy self-portraits" session with Olimpia Zagnoli on July 27, a photographic laboratory with Piotr Niepsuj on July 28, and a "draw the summer" class on July 29.
The store will employ 230 staff, many of whom have come to Milan from Apple stores around the world, according to Apple. Apple Piazza Liberty opens Thursday, July 26, at 5pm, and registrations for Today at Apple can be made now on
Apple's website.
Article Link:
Apple Previews New Piazza Liberty Store, Opening Thursday in Milan
Damn and blast my inability to read... when I glance at things that I scroll by too fast, I have a split-second to read them, I misread, and end up getting all excited. I thought this one read, “Apple opens pizza library,” and figured it would be a restaurant where you could go to “check out” different kinds of pizza. Or that maybe it was a pizza liberty, meaning FREE PIZZA, which... what could be better than Apple buying all the customers that have pumped billions and billions of dollars into it a goddamned pizza party, which would be nice of them, even if it fell under the heading of “the least they could do”. Personally, I’d much rather they thank us by doing updating the Mac Mini finally, maybe make it more like the Mac Mini of yesteryear in being able to be opened and upgraded in even some MODEST fashion, rather than let it languish forever or... I expect if they ever do update it that the new version will be welded or glued shut in such a way as to make not only upgrades or repair impossible, but that it will self-destruct if you even THINK about opening it.
You go to the Genius Bar with it, and they look at it and look at you, and say, “sorry, you clearly thought about opening it, and that voided your warranty, retroactively to the moment you bought it. But there’s good news, we’ll sell you another one and even will generously allow you to give us your old one for recycling.”
What I’d love to see is if they went back and resurrected the old, aluminum-body MacPro, updated to replace the “Li’l Trash Can” Mac, (a horrifically stupid design choice, made by someone who apparently didn’t realize someone already used almost that exact same design for TRASH CANS,) or if they’d bring back an updated version of the Mac Cube because THAT was some beautiful design. Imagine the kind of power you could realize from something like that...
We all know what experts Apple has become at fabricating large pieces of glass. They could make the Mac Cube, 25th anniversary edition, or whatever, (has it been 25 years?) make it glass instead of plastic, even if it means using a LITTLE more packing material to protect it better than they did with the Mac Cube, (as I recall, people dropping a grand or two on a Mac Cube and coming back all pissed off when they received one with a cracked acrylic housing was a big part of the problem.
They could dump the Mac Mini AND TrashMacPro in favor of a revised and updated Mac Cube. Maybe a hair bigger than the original, made of stout, crack, scratch, and shatter-resistant plastic or glass, (why not use Nalgene?) OH! they could offer them in a variety of colors like the i: Phones, Pods, Pads, Watches, etc., which would look really badass... or even let users buy new cases (in different colors) after the fact when they want to switch them up.
As a nod to the Mac that resurrected Apple and pulled them out of the garbage as a company, (making it such a perfect replacement for the stupid, ugly Trashcan Mac, or MacTrashCan or whatever... they could, in addition to a clear one, (like the original Mac Cube) and offering them in a Space-Grey and Rose-Gold tinted options, they could offer them in the original rainbow of colors that the original... was it eMacs? Or iMacs... I guess it was iMacs, but you know, the Aqua Blue, and Ruby Red, and Lime Green or whatever? THOSE. Those were pretty colors, and offering them in that variety would be awesome.
EVEN BETTER... they could offer one that was capable of changing its color on command. THERE’S AN IDEA...
Make the entire exterior surface a wrap-around, multi-color e-ink display, capable of being addressed by the computer as a device, (even if mostly invisibly to the user,) capable of taking patterns, gradients, or even of having colors scintillate all over and around the surface of the device. Now THAT’D be cool.
Apple could do any or all of these things; they have the know-how and the resources, it would be almost trivially easy for them. Every day that passes where they do NONE of these things is because they’re too busy trying to figure out how to cell more CELL PHONES and HOME PODS, (speakers people don’t need,) and iWatches... as I’ve been saying for a while now, Apple has strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
