Hang in there! All of the local stores around me were rumored for 2-3 years before they opened, at least, and there's more planned for 2-3 years out.

FWIW, the reason they ask for your zip code (or are supposed to) is that goes into the database that they use to figure out where to locate new stores.

"...but no permanent till staff. I hear that's changing though."

Yes, it is changing, and this is what it is changing to. EasyPay is king. The Point of Sale is dead.

You, sir, have no idea what you're talking about.

"and many a business that is doing well, debt free, excited, market loves them, and currently their products are popular start expanding retail outlets only to find themselves a few years later stuck with chunks of brick and sheetrock that are a drain on the bottom-line."

No other retail business has had the growth, sales, and products that the Apple Store has. It is impossible to compare them to anyone else, or to think that the past performance of other companies and stores means anything about the future of Apple.

If its a saturated market, why when Fifth Avenue opened, did sales there surpass SoHo, and SoHo kept going up? And then with W14 opened... sales there were through the roof, and SoHo and 5th didn't take a hit at all?

Sorry, but you are not smarter than the people they pay to figure out where to put stores.

Ahem.

"If the President does not sign the bill within the required time period, the bill becomes law by default. However, the exception to this rule is if Congress adjourns before the ten days have passed and the President has not yet signed the bill. In such a case, the bill does not become law; it is effectively, if not actually, vetoed."

So not only was TJ a little off-base with his description, you were too.

Steven Degutis wrote about this from a developer's perspective last week, pretty interesting read, and useful if you want to know how to use this new stuff to make your apps better.

http://www.degutis.org/dev/2009/08/28/dear-devs-help-our-macs-quit-faster/

Soundboard is a really amazing app. It may not seem like a lot is going on, but it is. Its gorgeous, responsive, and damn nifty, espically when combined with their other apps.

@mech "icons are just pictures sitting on the desktop..."

wrong. icons are rendered in much the same way individual windows are. for example, press cmd-shift-4, then tap the spacebar, and go over the icons on the desktop. It'll change to grab only the icon when you're over it, the same as it will a window.

I've got a few of these apps on my Macs, and they're really handy.

DeskLabels is my favorite.

*golfclap*

great breakdown of the latest iPod fearmongering going around.

For all the folks saying "zomg but what if it was microsoft?!!?" well, I'd say the same thing. A few dozen failures out of hundreds of millions of units is going to happen, especially in the event that the unit is damaged (as in this case, they dropped it first).

Everyone needs to calm down and take a deep breath, much as Lauren has done here.