The only way to get an appointment is to get one immediately once they make new ones available at midnight.

Am I the only one who finds this vain and disrespectful? I'm on time to my meetings. I'm on time to dinner after boozy brunch. Yet Apple can't help but overcommit when I take the time to schedule with them?

Go ahead and charge me a $20 cancellation fee for a "premium appointment". But don't present your brand with all the poise and discipline of a teen Hollywood wannabe.

They're taking away the mezzanine floor at the front of the store to turn the main section just inside the entrance into a big, open two-storey high square space (which sounds similar to the glass-roofed space at the existing Covent Garden store).

Adding more space to sit sounds like the approach taken by luxury boutiques, which often have chairs and sofas for customers (or, more likely, their spouses) to sit and relax.

What does that mean?

I'll never meet anybody "at Apple". I may meet them at an Apple store but if anyone says the words "at Apple" then the meeting is off because I never want to speak to you again.

We say "at McDonalds" or "at Starbucks" because these places have a sort of casual ubiquity that's inserted them into our daily lives. We say "at the Apple store" because that's what feels right based its place in our daily experience.

A marketing guy trying to goad us into giving the Apple store that same casual ubiquity without "earning" it just by dropping some leather couches and potted plants into a store is pretentious. It feels wrong and we know it in an uncanny valley sort of way.

I don't think I can reach those heights. (Remember those Mac vs PC commercials? You can't get much more uppity than that.)

Do a good enough job creating an inviting public space, that people frequent, then yes, I think it's a reasonable goal to say, "Let's meet at Apple" - you've got to aspire to something, and that seems like a pretty worthwhile goal.