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Europe's Largest Apple Museum Opens in the Netherlands With 50 Years of Products on Display

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Europe's largest Apple museum to date opened in early April, coinciding with Apple's 50th anniversary. The Apple Museum spans 2,000 square meters and is located at the Wall Utrecht in the Netherlands.

apple-museum-imac-wall.jpg

The museum's creator, Ed Bindels, claims that the space features one of the largest Apple collections in the world, and it has several rooms dedicated to Apple's design. There is an eye-catching rainbow wall of iMac G3 machines, a recreation of the garage Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked in, an iPod display, and more.

apple-museum-garage.jpg

Everything from classic Macs to modern iPhones is included in the museum, and it showcases almost all of the devices that Apple has released from 1976 to 2026. Bindels says the museum tells a story, featuring different stages in Apple's development timeline.
"For example, there is a space that shows what happened after Steve Jobs left Apple and the company went through a difficult period. Visitors then walk through a 'Think Different' corridor into a circular room filled with colorful iMacs. This room symbolizes the beginning of a new chapter for Apple. Throughout the museum, we tell different stories through the products."
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Bindels teamed up with a group of volunteers to collect and restore devices, accessories, prototypes, manuals, and brand materials. Some of the devices in the museum are functional and are available for guests to use.

apple-museum-classic-macs.jpg

Tickets to the Apple Museum are priced at €21.50 for adults, with discounts available for students and children.

Article Link: Europe's Largest Apple Museum Opens in the Netherlands With 50 Years of Products on Display
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/09/europe-apple-museum/
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as interesting as this most likely is, I keep wondering why people/cities/communities/whatever feel the need to open up museums in locations which have no connection to the subject at all. The same thing applies to random celebrity statues (I mean, WHY is there a Charlie Chaplin statue in Bulgaria, of all places).
 
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Pretty cool. I need to visit more museums. Not sure I would travel across the pond just to see this one, but I’ve only visited like one museum the last 5 years.
 
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aries81 said:
as interesting as this most likely is, I keep wondering why people/cities/communities/whatever feel the need to open up museums in locations which have no connection to the subject at all. The same thing applies to random celebrity statues (I mean, WHY is there a Charlie Chaplin statue in Bulgaria, of all places).
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For “niche museums”, it’s tourism, so they’ll open up in cities / near to cities that are already tourist-focused. People visit a place on holiday, and tend to wander around aimlessly. You can make a business out of grabbing some of that footfall.
 
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imac g3 ..

when macos was not ugly and not yet so much bloated as it is today. it also had less restrictions, less bugs too.
hardware wasn't that great .. barely acceptable, performance wise, and design like flashy candy colors was ridiculous. but software was nice. and there were a bit less flashy devices available too.
today is the opposite. hardware is excellent, but software has become unbearable.
apple from ppc era, was much more enjoyable as it is today.
even after the x86 switch it was still okay-ish for a while.
then around the time apple unveilled great hardware, macos had reached an horrible state.
bloated to the core.. 150gb the installed OS !
bloat, bugs and unfinished business everywhere..
decades old problems that accumulated , and apple refusing to fix it, even for things like finishing proper window management implementation.
restrictions everywhere, can't even choose my own font. i like bold font, well too bad, user preferences like that are not permitted. no choosing font familly or weight.
interoperability features are still non-existant.
and ridiculous concepts being enforced , such as 150gb OS masquarading as a bios .. or no boot from external device allowed.

i mean..apple.. come on ..do something..

( edit: i discovered i made a mistake in size calculation, the installed OS is *not* 150gb, but rather around 20-40gb . depending if you have dev stuff installed or not. apologies for the error )
 
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alchemistmuffin said:
But is this authorized by Apple? Otherwise, Apple Lawyers would like a word with them. 🧑‍💼👩‍💼👨‍💼🕴️
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Historically, we used to say something like, black helicopters are on the way, to mean Apple was taking action to stop someone or something.
 
alchemistmuffin said:
But is this authorized by Apple? Otherwise, Apple Lawyers would like a word with them. 🧑‍💼👩‍💼👨‍💼🕴️
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My thoughts exactly. Not sure what the rules on these kinds of things are, but it seems like something that would need to be authorized.

Otherwise, I’m sure they’ll be receiving a cease-and-desist from trying to make money off Apple’s IP.
 
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aries81 said:
as interesting as this most likely is, I keep wondering why people/cities/communities/whatever feel the need to open up museums in locations which have no connection to the subject at all. The same thing applies to random celebrity statues (I mean, WHY is there a Charlie Chaplin statue in Bulgaria, of all places).
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A museum is a showcase of the subject, the actual location of the museum isn't always relevant.

alchemistmuffin said:
But is this authorized by Apple? Otherwise, Apple Lawyers would like a word with them. 🧑‍💼👩‍💼👨‍💼🕴️
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Tickets for 21 euros, they are certainly not making big money out of it. Apple hasn't closed any other independent museums showcasing their history and products so far. Maybe just a notification of the initiative was enough.

(I'll ask them when I visit)
 
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I really hope this museum has a few things on display focusing on one of Apple’s three founders, Ronald Wayne. Tim Cook is so clueless and mediocre that he didn’t even mention the cofounder Wayne on the 50th anniversary celebration of Apple’s founding. Wayne is the one who, among other important things, typed up Apple’s founding documents which legally and officially established Apple as a company on April 1, 1976. Is Cook really too stupid to understand that is the day and event that the 50th anniversary celebration should be celebrating?

Hey Tim, you mediocre hack, it is Ronald Wayne who is a founder of Apple, not any of the celebrity musicians you invited.
 
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Powerbooky said:
Tickets for 21 euros, they are certainly not making big money out of it.
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To be fair, for European prices, 21 Euro ( no -s on Euro ) is not particularly expensive, but it’s not particularly cheap either.

This museum is clearly being positioned as a “for profit” business, not a charity or for the betterment of humanity. In that way it’s a good reflection of its subject matter.

That’s not to say anything negative about it, and the best of luck to the founder, which, for him, I’m sure is a labour of love, and his backers, but let’s call a spade a spade.
 
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aries81 said:
as interesting as this most likely is, I keep wondering why people/cities/communities/whatever feel the need to open up museums in locations which have no connection to the subject at all. The same thing applies to random celebrity statues (I mean, WHY is there a Charlie Chaplin statue in Bulgaria, of all places).
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Because he mocked Hitler quite a bit?
 
aries81 said:
as interesting as this most likely is, I keep wondering why people/cities/communities/whatever feel the need to open up museums in locations which have no connection to the subject at all. The same thing applies to random celebrity statues (I mean, WHY is there a Charlie Chaplin statue in Bulgaria, of all places).
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Would you suggest that the museum dedicated to American history that’s located in England shouldn’t be there? Sometimes people want to learn and experience things without travelling abroad or even further. As for the Chaplin statue:

Because it is not really “random Bulgaria”; it is Gabrovo, a town that is famous inside Bulgaria for humour and satire. The Chaplin statue is part of Gabrovo’s House of Humour and Satire and its surrounding “Park of Laughter,” where Chaplin sits alongside other comic or literary figures. In that setting, Chaplin is there as an international symbol of visual comedy, not because he had some deep personal Bulgarian connection.

Gabrovo actively presents itself as the Bulgarian capital of humour, and the museum was created to collect and exhibit humorous and satirical art from around the world. So a statue of perhaps the most universally recognisable screen comedian makes cultural sense there.

There is also evidence that Chaplin was especially admired in Bulgaria: one source notes that his films were often shown there, and that Bulgarians greatly valued his work. The statue in Gabrovo was sculpted by Georgi Chapkanov/Chapkunov in 1985.

So the real answer is: it is there because Gabrovo is a humour town, and Chaplin fits the town’s identity perfectly. Not because Bulgaria had some odd one-off obsession with him.
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