With Apple's official launch of the iPad in Australia, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong just hours away, it seems that some of the company's retail stores are beginning their preparations. At Apple's Fukuoka Tenjin store in Japan, which closed for the night a little over an hour ago, employees are currently hard at work removing iPad 2 units from display in order to replace them with demo models of the new iPad.
Apple's retail stores will be opening at 8:00 AM local time to begin selling the new iPad, but some third-party retail partners will be opening even earlier. In fact, our friends at iFixit have traveled to Australia in order to be among the first to obtain an iPad for teardown purposes and were first in line at a Telstra retail store in Melbourne that opened just a few minutes ago at midnight. The carrier is even celebrating the event with a meter square iPad cake.
Update: iFixit now has its iPad in hand and will begin tearing it down shortly.
Photos have been making the rounds on Chinese social media today showing an Honor-branded advertising truck parked directly in front of Apple Canton Road store in Hong Kong, promoting the company's new Honor 600 series smartphone.
The truck's ad features the slogan "It's our HONOR" alongside the phrase "orange to orange," which appears to be a play on the English idiom "apples to apples"...
The IAM Union representing Apple employees in Towson, Maryland today said that it is filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge [PDF] against Apple with the National Labor Relations Board. The union is accusing Apple of unlawful discrimination against unionized workers.
Earlier this month, Apple announced plans to close the Towson Apple Store alongside two other Apple locations in Connecticut...
In a letter sent to Apple's CEO Tim Cook and hardware engineering chief John Ternus this week, nine members of U.S. Congress from Maryland expressed "serious concern" regarding Apple's decision to close its unionized retail store in Towson, Maryland on June 20, without plans to open a replacement store within the Baltimore region.
Apple Towson Town Center
"We recognize that decisions of this...
We spend months following every single new internal leak.
We finally see an assembled one at the Apple's keynote event.
We tear it down to see internals again after the launch.
I've had cakes with designs like that before, and calling them "edible" is the same as calling paper "edible". The design literally peels right off... it's just a layer of fondant. And for those who have never eaten fondant before, let me tell you, fondant sucks. Though it's made of only sugar and water, it tastes nothing like sugar or water (or soda, which is also just sugar and water.)
It's an iPad cake. It will be magically delicious. :D
