June 17, 2010 | Filed Under Apple | 1 Comment
Another gift for World Expo City, Ala Nong Zanghae. (That’s Shanghainese in Pinyin for 阿拉侬上海, which is Shanghainese for “your and our Shanghai”.) Look for Sanlitun a la Shanghai — as in another Apple Store in the People’s Republic.
We quote AppleInsider:
Apple’s cylindrical glass tower entrance to the new underground retail megastore in Shanghai, China, set to open mid July, is now decked in red curtains, signaling close proximity to launch.
The new real property is one of the two new stores opening in Shanghai this summer and counts among the 25 new Apple Stores that the company’s chief operations executive Tim Cook said would open in China by the end of 2011.
The new store’s design is reminiscent of Apple’s iconic flagship New York City store on Fifth Avenue, which is similarly located entirely underground and features a dramatic giant glass cube entrance.
The Apple Store in Shanghai is located between the IFC Mall and the Oriental Pearl TV Tower in Shanghai’s Lujiazui biz district. Metro-wise, it’s around the Lujiazui station on Line 2, which will also be a future interchange with Line 14. (Both lines are “wide train” lines and major trunk routes underground in the city.) It’s in Pudong, which has been derided as “Pu Jersey” (this will bring up “ahs” for those in the Big Apple and New Jersey, as well as, interestingly, Australians), but which, being on the eastern side of the Huangpu River, is hosting the China Pavillion at the World Expo.
If you wanted in right now, though, good luck. The place is now in red curtains, guarded by ninjas who won’t allow photography. (China is cracking down, more and more, on photography as of late; we’ve heard them doing so in railway stations, Subway stops, and even taking a pic of the Beijing CBD has “aroused interest” from “relevant persons”.)
And why red? It’s got little to do with the politics (although the party and national flag are all in red, as well), and more to do with a Chinese tradition that dates back to imperial times. Red’s seen as a good color in China, so much so that weddings are all-red ceremonies. Obviously, when Apple opens the thing in Shanghai, it’s got to be in a festive mood, right?
We’ll either have live coverage on that day (when the Lujiazui store opens) or link to places providing live coverage.
May 3, 2010 | Filed Under Apple | No Comments
A little maths first:
- USD 399 = CNY 2,723.57
- CNY 5,998 = 878.70
OK, so how would you like your iPad today — but at twice the cost? That’s right. In the southern Chinese city of Dongguan, iPads are on sale — but at twice the cost — and for once, the national People.com.cn is being a price watchdog, reporting this story coming in from the Guangzhou Daily. For the low-cost 16 GB version (wifi only), the equivalent of nearly USD 900 is being charged — virtually twice the US list price.
And while iFanr may have had a spin with the iPad a few weeks back, if you wanted to take one back home, that was only possible in Dongguan beginning this past weekend. The delay of the iPad was cited as a major reason — its most recent promised date of arrival, late April 2010, got pushed back just recently by yet another month. Meanwhile, a few tweeps already have it, and your blogger already gave it a spin — exciting but hardly portable (although it does free him from taking a MacBook all over the place).
Meanwhile, queries as to when the iPad will arrive in Beijing’s Apple Store was replied with the near-universal answer, “we have no idea”. When challenged whether staff were instructed to give the default “no idea” answer, staff continued by saying they really had no idea.
Sadly, nor does Cupertino, with the delays coming one after the other. Markets outside the US are already getting it late; getting it into China will require another round of compulsory CCC checks.
It’ll be some time become you’re on the Subway with an iPad in hand, it seems…
August 7, 2009 | Filed Under Apple | No Comments
Talk about popular things in China! China’s most popular IM protocol is neither MSN / Windows Live Messenger nor AOL Instant Messenger (or MobileMe), but rather — a locally-made chat program called Tencent QQ, or more simply known as “QQ”. Have no idea how popular the thing is? There is a car out there called the QQ. Now we’ve no idea if Tencent (the company behind QQ) actually made it.
But we digress. Chinese Mac site Beijing Mac House has it that QQ for iPhone 2.5 has been released. The equally popular iPhone (from outside the mainland, of course) is what you need to run QQ for iPhone — and the app works great on WAP (CMNET and CMWAP) as well as over wifi. The interface also looks pretty good.
In terms of new updates, QQ for iPhone 2.5 adds support for saving QQ groups, improves chat transcripts, has a new feature for blocking individual group messages, and sports a better interface. Bugs, including those regarding logon, special characters, emoticons and group lists, have also been quashed. Now that we’ve you mouthwatering away digitally, it’s best to let you download it.
This article is cross-posted on the following textweit Content Sites: Global Mac News, techblog86
August 5, 2009 | Filed Under Apple | No Comments
A myriad of interesting articles by way of @frankyu, pointing us to iPhonAsia.com:
• An Apple executive team is apparently going to Beijing. Local media repots that Greg Joswiak, Apple VP for iPhone Product Marketing, will, along with a team from Apple, head to Beijing later this week. This could see iPhone talks restarted, as well as meetings with China Unicom and the PRC’s telco authorities. This is not, as the site has pointed out, the first-ever such talks; similar meetings happened earlier this year (in March and April 2009).
• A more recent post, iPhone in China… It ain’t over till it’s over, points to Tim Cook’s careful choice of words — and the oft-quoted timetable: “within a year”. The blog notes that this could mean tomorrow, or 12 months from now! There’s also a nice comparison of the iPhone and China negotiations to a basketball game between the US and China (there’s a pic of Yao Ming there, by the way). It’s not just Apple China, by the way, who wants the iPhone in the Middle Kingdom; even names like Best Buy China and Wal-Mart China are floating out there!
This article is cross-posted on the following textweit Content Sites: Global Mac News, techblog86
August 3, 2009 | Filed Under Apple | No Comments
If you thought that China was without an iPhone, you’re wrong. Many folks have their iPhones in China over from Hong Kong or overseas, and your fellow blogger himself is an iPhone user and a dedicated tweeter on one of these things.
News coming in from German Mac site Mac Life reports a local, official version of the iPhone OKed — but without the crucial wifi option. PRC telco laws prohibit devices sold locally from doing both voice communications and wifi — apparently to get people pay extra for using long-distance services from local telcos.
This very iPhone, then, has been ridiculed amongst the Chinese Twittersphere as the “eunuch iPhone” (太监 iPhone). The phone is slated to be bundled with China Unicom, which uses the WCDMA protocol (as opposed to heavyweight China Mobile sticking by Chinese-made TD-SCDMA protocols).
This article is cross-posted on the following textweit Content Sites: Global Mac News, techblog86