Contest: Match that McDo@30 store!

This week, McDonalds is sponsoring a little something-something for our readers in celebration of their 30 years in the business. And if you’re a regular McDo visitor, this should be like a walk in the park.

So here’s what you just need to do – we’ll post 4 photos of branches of McDo in Metro Manila. These are Greenhills, Makati Cinema Square, North Avenue, and Quezon Avenue.

{Note: Click on the thumbnails to see the larger photo.}

In the same order as shown above, match which McDo store is which.

Go hit the comments for your answer. You can only answer once (we’ll consider your first entry as your official entry).

The first 4 people who correctly guessed the correct branches will win Php500 McDo GC each and McDonald’s Premium Items.

Btw, show some love to our sponsor by becoming a fan on Facebook (click here).

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Windows 8 will have its own app store

Microsoft

The next version of Microsoft's operating system, Windows 8, will include an app store so that software can be downloaded directly from the online store to the computer.

Microsoft follows Apple's lead by doing this; Apple started its Mac App Store last January, and has showcased it as being the main way to buy its new operating system, OS X Lion.

While word has been that the app store direction was where Microsoft was headed, a recent posting on the company's own blog confirmed it, with an ever-so-slight, but significant, inclusion of it in a long list of working Windows 8 groups. (Msnbc.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

As one of our colleagues noted last spring, another website "beat Microsoft to the punch with its own Windows app store, Allmyapps.com," which "announced that it has attracted 100,000 users in just three months."

There's no set release date for Windows 8 yet, but that will give Microsoft time to square away the name for its app store. While the blog lists it as App Store, capital "a," capital "s," it's treading on a sore spot with Apple, which has applied to trademark "App Store."

Microsoft has filed a legal challenge with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, saying "the combined term 'app store' is commonly used in the trade, by the general press, by consumers, by Apple’s competitors and even by Apple’s founder and CEO Steve Jobs, as the generic name for online stores featuring apps."

The Redmond company calls its Windows Phone app store the Windows Marketplace, which sounds more like a place to buy fish and fruit. But if it doesn't stick with "app store," there could be another name available with the demise of HP/Palm's webOS: "App Catalog."

— Via Tech Crunch

Related stories:

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

View the original article here

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Windows 8 will have its own app store

Microsoft

The next version of Microsoft's operating system, Windows 8, will include an app store so that software can be downloaded directly from the online store to the computer.

Microsoft follows Apple's lead by doing this; Apple started its Mac App Store last January, and has showcased it as being the main way to buy its new operating system, OS X Lion.

While word has been that the app store direction was where Microsoft was headed, a recent posting on the company's own blog confirmed it, with an ever-so-slight, but significant, inclusion of it in a long list of working Windows 8 groups. (Msnbc.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

As one of our colleagues noted last spring, another website "beat Microsoft to the punch with its own Windows app store, Allmyapps.com," which "announced that it has attracted 100,000 users in just three months."

There's no set release date for Windows 8 yet, but that will give Microsoft time to square away the name for its app store. While the blog lists it as App Store, capital "a," capital "s," it's treading on a sore spot with Apple, which has applied to trademark "App Store."

Microsoft has filed a legal challenge with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, saying "the combined term 'app store' is commonly used in the trade, by the general press, by consumers, by Apple’s competitors and even by Apple’s founder and CEO Steve Jobs, as the generic name for online stores featuring apps."

The Redmond company calls its Windows Phone app store the Windows Marketplace, which sounds more like a place to buy fish and fruit. But if it doesn't stick with "app store," there could be another name available with the demise of HP/Palm's webOS: "App Catalog."

— Via Tech Crunch

Related stories:

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

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The Apple Store Is Just Too Damn Nice

written by John Chow on July 26, 2011

Apple Stores are the most profitable stores in the world. They make more money per square foot than any other retail stores in any category. Flagship stores, like the one on New York’s Fifth Avenue, have become tourist attractions.

In addition to printing money for Apple, the stores are known for being extremely nice to customers and letting them get away with stuff that a normal store would never allow. YouTube is filled with videos of people singing and dancing inside an Apple store and the employees don’t even bat an eye.

My good buddy, Mark Malkoff over at My Damn Channel, decided to do an Apple store challenge and test how far you can push an Apple store before they get pissed at you and kick your ass to curb. It turns out, you can get away with a lot!

    Tweet This Post!

Posted in Technology, Videos

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Fake Apple store sells real products

 Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The exterior of the fake Apple store on Zhengyi Road in Kunming, China that BirdAbroad blogged about.

By Adrienne Mong

KUNMING, YUNNAN PROVINCE, CHINA – It’s hard to imagine an American expatriate more unpopular in Kunming right now than the woman who runs the blogsite BirdAbroad.  

Last week, she chanced upon not one but three knock-off Apple shops near the heart of the southwestern city’s shopping district. The main one on Zhengyi Road, she wrote, “was a total Apple store rip-off.  A beautiful rip-off.”

This week, local authorities in the Yunnan capital began shutting them down. However, the “fake” Apple shop so thoroughly described by BirdAbroad remains open. 

Its saving grace?

Their Apple products – iPhones, iPads, iPods, Shuffles, and a variety of computers – are genuine.

The real thing?
“All our products are real,” said Yang Jie, the store manager, when we visited over the weekend. Yang also hastened to tell us they come with a guarantee although no refunds are offered. “Stores don’t return money in China.”

Even though the products looked authentic – we did a series of tests on iPads and desktop computers playing “Angry Birds” – none of the staff said they knew how they’d obtained the goods.

Yang said the shop’s owner, whom he refused to identify, was responsible for organizing the supply. (The staff were later quoted in news reports saying they planned to apply for a license to sell their products).

If the goods are real, some customers said, there was no problem with the shop not being a “real” Apple store or even a licensed reseller. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

One of the displays inside the fake Apple store on Zhengyi Road in Kunming, China that BirdAbroad blogged about.

But Wang Haijun, a lawyer in Beijing, said if the shop on Zhengyi Road isn’t authorized to sell Apple products, then their origins pose complications and the retailer could still be in breach of Chinese law.  Particularly if they might be goods brought in from overseas, he said, then it raises import duty considerations.

Even the knock-off store’s design is problematic, according to Wang.

“If the whole store’s decoration, design, product display, and staff’s outfits – if these in general are the same as that of an authorized Apple store, it’s copyright infringement,” he said.  “It’s an infringement of Apple.”

Indeed, the shop did get many of the details right: the bright interiors, the long wooden tables, and the matching blue t-shirts with the Apple logo in the front.  Even the crowds that crowded around the displays lent it an authentic feel.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Customers examine the real Apple products in the fake Kunming, China store BirdAbroad blogged about on July 23.

Practically the only thing missing was security. 

When we took a spin through the flagship store in Beijing’s Sanlitun neighborhood this week, we counted 22 men in black uniforms with “RiskControl” written on their sleeve. 

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Welcome to the Apple store that isn't

They have smiles on their faces and apples on their hearts.

They have iPods, iPads, and MacBook Pros on their tables and pristine white paint on their walls.

But these are mere prestidigitators who want to press you into believing you are in a temple of the digital world. For, as beautifully relayed by the American blogger BirdAbroad, this Apple store in Kunming, China, is less apple pie and more, well, takeaway.

The owners appear to have taken away everything they believe Apple devotees worship in retail. The blogger, a 27-year-old who lives in Kunming with her husband, was herself at first fooled. But then the scales fell from her eyes and the wails began to develop a little lower down.

"The stairs were poorly made. The walls hadn't been painted properly," she noted.

"Appointment at the Genius Bar for next Tuesday? Certainly, madam."

(Credit: BirdAbroad)

When she thought about it a little further she realized that Apple stores aren't called Apple stores. At least not at the store. There is only the Apple logo on the storefront. Yet here were the words "Apple Store," bold as you like.

As the blogger (who seems to be called Jessica) sniffed around further, she examined the MacBooks and other products--which she can't be sure are really MacBooks or, indeed, anything to do with Apple. She then talked to the staff, who truly seemed to believe that they work for Apple.

Crucially, Apple doesn't appear to think so--there is no mention of an Apple store in Kunming on Apple's Web site.

A PC World commenter called MarkWine7 said the store had been open for a while and that it was "100% fake."

Another PC World commenter, Edelbrp, suggested that this might be one of 13 Apple resellers in Kunming--which is in southwestern China and is renowned, among other things, for being the place where Chinese athletes undergo high-altitude training.

BirdAbroad said on her blog, however, that this was not some elevated Apple reseller. She wrote in reply to one commenter on her blog: "If I bring my computer to the fake "Genius Bar," is anyone there actually going to be able to do anything about it? I seriously doubt it."

To support her position, a commenter on her blog called Todd, who said he worked for Apple, was very clear: "As an Apple employee, this is not an Apple Premium Reseller. It doesn't even look like a proper reseller; more like a ghetto version of the Apple Store."

Indeed, the pictured and loftily entitled Apple Store may not even be the only slightly dubious one in the area. BirdAbroad said she espied two more--one of which was helpfully called "Apple Stoer."

It seems that fake Apple products and stores are proliferating in China. There again, perhaps these products are merely leftovers from the Chinese factories that make them in the first place. Every factory has leftovers, doesn't it?

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