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Apple Regent Street has the largest sales floor of any Mac store, and the biggest collection of Mac products worldwide, with 77 iPods and 60 Macs on display, skewed quite strongly towards portables and the iMac. Upstairs, eight eMacs provide a space to leave kids while the adults shop and play.

Regent Street is the 99th Apple Store, and the first of just three destined for a UK opening over the next 12 months. Follow-ups are slated for Birmingham Bullring and Bluewater in Kent. Since the first store opened its doors in the US in May 2001 that means the company has opened one new real-world outlet every 13 days, helping deliver a $1.2bn turnover and $40mn profit.

So why London? As Ron Johnson, Apple's VP of Retail explained, the success of the company's first store - in New York's Station A Post Office - helped it realise that fusing old with new works was one of the keys to success. Jobs himself has weekly meetings with the Store design team, which was also responsible for the design of the Pixar offices - and expounds upon them his belief that Apple is at the nexus of technology and art.

But while they all follow a similar plan, each store has its idiosyncracies. In Chicago it's a rooftop garden. In Tokyo, five floors of retail space. In London it's the Studio, and a 14-metre Genius Bar.

The Studio and Genius Bar
'Your ideas. Our help,' is how Apple bills the Studio. Staffed by creative types, it's where you take your projects when

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you're in need of assistance. It could be anything from building an album for your holiday photos, to picking a better soundtrack for your first iMovie. A UK-first, it has space for ten visitors and will be manned, Johnson assures us, by staff who will be 'happy to watch your movie'.

It may be the Store's biggest innovation, but it's dwarfed by the Genius bar. Building on the success of previous bars, Apple has upped the stool count from four to 20.

Here, you'll be able to get face to face support rather than telephone help, with all assistance free and bookable through any of the Macs on display in the Store. It's expected to be one of the biggest draws, so customers with a £79 ProCare card can book up to seven days in advance, and specify the 'genius' they'd like to help them out.

Behind the bar, plasma screens roll a continuous loop of low-level Mac tips.

The design of the Store is classic Apple, closely mimicking others around the world. At the top of the wide glass staircase the 64-seat theatre will be home to a varied selection of lectures, with one an hour, every hour, every day of the week.
Themed to run along set areas of interest, they mimic the defined zones of the store, with weekends focusing on the digital hub; and photography, music, business and movies taking up Monday to Thursday.

The lectures are free, just like the Genius Bar, the 'soul' of the store. Asked how it cold financially justify this when it could otherwise be charging premium rates for phone line help, Johnson explained that Apple didn't want to talk about revenue, but about 'earning recognition from their customers'. Likewise, nobody who works at the store earns any commission. 'The whole store should wrap their collective arms around the customer,' he explained.

The Apple Store, Regent Street, opens at 10am on Saturday 20 November. Opening dates for the Birmingham and Bluewater stores have not yet been revealed.

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