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A
Visit To Huntington
by
Bill Chachkes
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It was Saturday May 10th, and I was finally going to get
to visit an Apple store on it’s first day of operation…
Sure,
I had been to the Apple store in Soho many times, but I had not managed
to get over to the Roosevelt field store mostly
due to problems
with traffic in the Garden City area. I wasn’t going to go early
and get on a long line. I had not done that since Pink Floyd played Yankee
stadium in 1994. I also had to keep the significant other happy, and
we were supposed to be furniture shopping for our new place. Still, I
wanted to see one of Apple’s smaller stores outside of Manhattan.
I was greeted at the store entrance by store Manager Jason Barlia,
and after introductions and small talk I asked him what he felt the
store’s
mission was to the Apple community. “We are here to be just as
much a resource to the Macintosh community as a place to buy new equipment.” That
was evident by the well trained staff at the store. First, we got
to spend some Quality time with Rick Johnson, and An e-Mac with JBL
Magnum
speakers. Rick and I go back a bit, as we both worked for Marketsource
on the Apple account, at different Wiz stores over the last few years.
We are both also music buffs. Somewhere on one of his Hard disks,
Rick must have about 50 Gigs of Music hiding out.
Rick
showed me the new iPod, which I later found out was sold out in
the 15 gig model in the first 4 hours of the store’s operation.
The other two must have items for any new Mac owner who also loves
music were the JBL Magnums( Msrp $199 for the subwoffer and 4 satillites)
and
a pair of Koss noise canceling headphones.The sound out of the Magnum’s
subwoffer was truly explosive. Annrose (My S.O.) was heard to exclaim “Who
needs a stereo anymore” She
then asked Rick “Can I hook these up to my older iMac?” “Any
Mac with an audio out jack” Rick explained. Next, we tried out
the Koss stereo noise canceling headphones. With two settings, the
Koss’ were
the Quietest Pair of ‘phones I had ever slipped on my head. Rick
had them hooked to a 30 Gig iPod playing his personal collection of
Eric Clapton Tunes. I had to restrain myself from singing along with
Clapton
and Duane Allman on “Layla”.
Rick, like all the store staff, were wearing their new Apple
music store launch shirts.
We
left Rick to his own devices, and crossed the store to the Dv camera
section. Here, several of the offerings from Cannon
and Sony
were on
display. The new Cannon ZR70 was hooked up to a 17” iMac
running iMovie 3. Enter James Christie. James took me through
the components
of iLife, and how everything really is easier on a mac. He
also helped me stage the perfect Photo of the iMac running
iMovie. Needless to
say we were again impressed at he level of training and knowledge
of the
store staff.
I
only had one dissapointment: The new Edirol Midi controller was on
display, but when I tried to play some music, there
was no software running.
James explained to me that they had shipped the keyboard
in time for the store opening that day but no software was
packed
in
the box. Pity
I could not crank it up and play the opening piano part to
Joan Crawford by Blue Oyster Cult.
While those folks who live in manhattan may find it hard
to justify a trip to a store in suffok county, people who
live
in eastern
Queens and
Brooklyn will find the new store a nice alternative to the
Garden City location, where parking may be an issue at times.
My thanks to the staff at the New Apple store in Huntington,
located in the walt Whitman Mall across from Blomingdales,
for letting me spend
some time with them on was was a very busy first day, and
for providing me an excuse for a break from furniture shopping
for an hour. Also my
thanks to the lovely Annrose for putting up with me in
the store for an hour, and for helping me with some of the
photos.
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