This will probably sound like hyperbole, but speaking as a Canadian from the West Coast I am getting kind of offended by all these Apple stores opening up in wild and wonderful places when we have zero of them up here.
Vancouver is the third largest metropolitan area in Canada (which is a gigantic english speaking country just to north of the US for those that don't seem to know). The culture is kind of like that of southern California (Apples home), but with a Canadian twist. Even though we have this huge population and a perfect matching environment and culture to Apple, the few stores that Apple has managed to open in Canada are almost exclusively in crappy little towns back east, with half our population and a tiny "tech community" to boot.
Apple just announced they are opening a store in Brazil and another in Mexico City, yet Vancouver is not a good place to do this? Even if they announced it tomorrow, it's a safe bet that we won't get one before 2009 at the earliest. This is just pathetic, and when you add the fact that the iTunes store doesn't work up here, the iPhone has no arrival date at all, and there is nothing to watch on Apple TV but movie trailers, it just boggles the mind.
Vancouver is also home to some of the most advanced software companies on the planet, high tech start-ups, large computer games outfits like Electronic Arts. Bleeding edge discoveries in physic and math, movie production facilities second only to Hollywood, thousands of Art Galleries, high fashion boutiques etc. In fact there is not a single high end retailer I've ever heard of that has a New York store and doesn't have an outlet here except Apple.
You can go to almost any coffee shop either downtown or on the "poor" side of town, and see a veritable sea of Mac laptops, whereas in Toronto (back east) it seems like they only heard about Apple computers last week sometimes. The whole situation is so absolutely Tospy-Turvy it leaves me speechless (well not quite, as you can see).
I know this is a bit of a rant, but it's gone beyond the "uncomfortable" stage and become a bit offensive to me.
This is Canada for cripes sake, not Outer-Mongolia!
It seems that US companies are always intent on pointing out how Canada is only slightly different from them, (a "variant" if you will of American culture), yet when the chips are down it always turns out to be "too much trouble" to alter their business practices even slightly to make it work up here.
Apple, please get off your collective lazy asses and do what's right for your millions of Canadian customers, instead of what seems easiest (to ignore us).
true that
