I visited Apple’s new store in Regent Street today. It opened on Saturday and boasts a Genius Bar, movie presentation theatre, and all the latest Apple hardware and software.

I didn’t take a long look at the outside of the store, given that it was very crowded and noisy on Regent Street (when isn’t it?) – it certainly looks impressive in the opening day photos, and images from its widespread press coverage. I expected the store to be bigger, maybe twice the width and depth of what it was, though perhaps, like the iPod or the latest G5 iMac, it’s intended to be small and near-perfectly formed.

Walking through the main doors, one is confronted with a wide transparent staircase leading to the upper floor and balconies. The lower floor is dedicated to an array of Macintosh machines, and Point of Sale desks. The upper floor houses the genius bar, the movie theatre, which remains open-plan to the rest of the store, and two wide balconies sporting iPods and accessories, Mac laptops, other hardware, and shelves of software.

I expected there to be more software on display, given that this is an Apple centre, however there is a good range of games, entertainment, and standards such as Photoshop, Office, music/audio, utilities etc.

There are comfortable cushions around a low circular des with machines loaded with child-friendly software – nice touch. There is a ‘design bar’ but I didn’t get to see much of this area.

I didn’t venture over to the Genius Bar, mainly because I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to ask, but I presume it was staffed by experts in various fields.

I was impressed with the number of staff around, all sporting cool black T-shirts and what looked like iPods – I am not sure if they were just showing these off or listening to them, or maybe they’d hooked up some neat communication system. From what I evesdropped, they appeared very helpful. I don’t know if general staff have to be users of one or more Apple products – I would expect all the experts to be well-seasoned users.

I stopped for a moment to observe the Garageband presentation in the theatre. Lovely large screen with glorious Mac desktop all over it. It looked like a nice environment. Several people sat with their Mac laptops (I did see one guy with a PC laptop – gasp!) Not being a Garageband user, and aware of my lunch time decreasiing, I picked up a copy of Norton AntiVirus (yes, I know, well I had to buy something and don’t have the cash for any fancy new gear – plus I have been getting awway without virus protection for way too long) and made my way down the glassy stairs – which I must say I found slightly unnerving, though classy – to pay.

Very pleased to see everyone using new iMacs as their POS devices.

I was pretty impressed with the store, and it’s nicely situated close to my workplace. It could get rather crowded at peak times (goodness only knows what it was like on opening day) but hey, it’s popular. Maybe not perfectly formed, but approaching – and definitely Apple.