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Apple shows off London shop

Jo Best silicon.com

Published: 18 Nov 2004 16:35 GMT

The store will also feature Apple's very own Genius Bar -- a collection of multilingual Mac brains whose job is to answer questions on Apple products. Customers can also get their Apple tech fixed for free -- the average turnaround time for a broken Mac is two days.

London's Genius Bar will be the biggest in any Apple store to date with 20 seats. Rob, one of Apple's Geniuses, used to be IT manager for a record label and, along with fellow UK Geniuses, was flown out to Apple's Cupertino headquarters for training and did a brief stint as a San Franciscan Genius.

Stearn said: "I've been a Mac user for many years. Mac users like to talk to other Mac users - they like to have a community."

So Apple's giving away free support -- what's in for Jobs and co? According to Johnson, as well as the 24 languages between them, the Genius crew all speak Windows. "It's reaching out to PC users - to switch to Mac," he said.

For anyone jumping ship, the Geniuses will sort out the transition, moving data and configuring settings in store. "We ask users 'What do you do with Windows and what would you like to do?', They're amazed at how much simpler it is with a Mac [and] we show them the similarites [between the two operating systems]," Stearn said. The Genius Bar can also set up any custom add-ons -- including adding wireless cards or extra memory -- before shoppers take the machine home.

As well as the Genius Bar, the London store will also have a Studio area. It's a concept broadly similar to the Genius Bar but with creatives rather than techies on hand to resolve queries.

Johnson described it as: "face-to-face support for creativity", with 10 stools, staffed by people who "worked in the industry as movie makers, photographers" and the like, who can offer advice on subjects including how to tart up home movies with new music or better titles.