Fake apple stores
birdabroad.wordpress.com
birdabroad.wordpress.com
Now I'm wondering how I know who I work for.
Now I'm wondering if I could have faked this entire blog post by photoshopping up some pics of a real Apple Store.
Now I'm wondering if I've been reading too much Philip K. Dick or too little.
or are they using second hand apple products ?
Maybe you're just running out of Ubik
I started from http://www.itproportal.com/2011/07/20/fake-apple-stores-mush... which at least link’s to it’s source. And says: "pictures of what looks like an Apple store but is in reality a completely genuine rip-off; the author of the post also confirms that the store was torn down and replaced by a bank" vs. what was actually said: "we went back to this store 5 days later and couldn’t find it, having overshot by two blocks, I seriously thought that it had simply been torn down and replaced with a bank in the meantime – hey, it’s China. That could happen."
So the Blog spam is a poor knockoff of a blog of about a knockoff store selling knockoff's of a real company's products. Yet the blog spam is still concerned enough about being copied that it’s using java script to prevent people copy pasting their text. Does that mean the knockoff story is also trying to keep people from copying them? And could someone be trying to reverse engineer a device sold in that store?
PS: Now concider for a moment where in the chain of fake this comment sit's.
It used to be "Only in America" that the world muttered in disbelief. This century, I'm thinking "Hey, it’s China. That could happen" might just be the new black, as it were.
For example:
"Johns describes how the first generation of American publishers came to constitute themselves as book pirates who openly violated British copyright law by systematically reprinting works that the British publishers considered their own lawful property. This laid the foundations for a vital but highly controversial book market in the new world and Johns concludes that by “the 1820s, Jacksonian America had a secure and vibrant public sphere – but to European eyes an utterly piratical one”.
Source: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit7/papers/Fredriksson-Draft-...
The US eventually became a champion of IP laws once its own IP industries became globally dominant. China will discover the joys of copyright and patent lawsuits once they dominate the IP industries.
Well English isn't the primary language there, that should probably make a difference in how things play out compared to the US.
EDIT: (compared to the US pirating British works)
By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million.
"There is, I think, no task-master over free labor so exacting as an American. He knows nothing of hours, and seems to have that idea of a man which a lady always has of a horse. He thinks that he will go forever. I wish those masons in London who strike for nine hours' work with ten hours' pay could be driven to the labor market of Western America for a spell. And moreover, which astonished me, I have seen men driven and hurried, as it were forced forward at their work, in a manner which, to an English workman, would be intolerable.... The complaint that wages are held back, and not even ultimately paid, is very common. There is no fixed rule for satisfying all such claims once a week, and thus debts to laborers are contracted, and when contracted are ignored."
As for intellectual property, the textile industry of New England got its start with English designs in something of an underhand way, I recall.
Almost seemed like a waste to go through the whole effort of knocking off an entire store, only to fill it with obviously fake merchandise.
Very, it turns out. It seemed a shame in cultural terms that saying "We work for Apple in the US and are making an on-site inspection" was enough to convince security to respect them, but actually, if you have the balls to pull it off, I bet that would work anywhere.
I really love that last picture with the spelling mistake "Apple Stoer".
Look at the photos of the employees. They look so sincere and earnest. I can only imagine the disappointment they will feel one day when they find out they're working for a con man.
I'd love it if this story ended with "and then Apple, seeing how badly Kunming wanted to have an Apple Store, came along, built a real one, and hired all the employees at the new, legitimate store."
It's not out of pure malice that prevents Apple from segmenting markets-- if the iPad sold in China is too much cheaper than the iPad sold in America, then people will just purchase iPads by the thousand to resell them in America.
They're obviously putting a tremendous amount of work into the clone, is hiring a native English speaker to look at it and make sure the English looks like English that much of an extra expense?
When I'm sending posters and promotional materials to our printer (as in: the company that does printing, not the device), I go over it again and again, then usually get a second and third set of eyes to triple check it for spelling errors.
These knockoffs are really good, it's kindof sad that they're so close, but missing it with the little stuff.
Or do they not really expect any English speakers to show up? If that's the case, why the English words at all?
Because it makes the store look trendy and sophisticated. Sort of like how many Americans will think some product is "upscale" if it has a French name or the voiceover actor in the ad has a British accent.
You will be surprised how bad is anything in foreign languages looks in major Hollywood movies. Apparently, hiring a Chinese/Russian/German speaker is too expensive even when their product is exposed to much wider audience.
The only time when the gibberish didn't seem random was during the movie Virus - there's a scene where they are choosing which language to display a control panel in, and one of the options is "Ebonics" - and the Russian underneath is just a random mix of letters, while the other Russian labeling was completely accurate.
It looks like they are selling genuine Apple products.
I have seen videos of (very obviously) fake iPhones, where they look pretty real until you start using it.
Would they actually sell anything if all they had was obviously fake crap?
I thought Apple only allowed licensed outlets to sell their products. My girlfriend worked for Best Buy, and if they sold certain items before the release date, Apple could have fined them or pulled all of their items from the store.
"Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of images, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to our current understanding of our lives."
Edit on further thought:
If the products are the same, how is this more 'real' than a genuine apple store? They are both just a collection of signs, branding, processes and marketing.
What happens when stores in even smaller towns spring up, copying this fake apple store? What then is the reality? How far along do the copies of copies need to go, before they are totally divorced from the originals in America? Do they then become 'real' and genuine their own right?
These new Apple Stoers would be very functional and serve the company on many levels. Quickly test new markets with low risk, introduce the Mac at a lower price point, and eventually could be replaced with Real Apple Stores in strong markets.
As the Chinese economy develops, the price of the merchandise increases (maybe shifting from store to store?) and in a few decades they have a stronghold on the edgy cool market of top-of-the-line-computers in the new world market, but also have one on the lower-end Apple Stoer brand.
Sounds like a good plan, just seems strange that we're all talking about it though...
The thing that gave it away for me (besides it being in Kunming) was the non-Lucida-Grande typeface everywhere.
If anyone wants me to go in there next week when I get back to the mainland, let me know.
Who can forget the ripoff X5 that they attempted to put on display in Frankfurt? (http://goo.gl/oPD5y) BMW wasn't having it.
Oh, have you seen the poorly cloned Disney World? (http://goo.gl/DO6Ii)