Apple Store: Manhattan

Shape of the Week goes to the new Apple Store in Manhattan. Nothing like a glass cube entryway to lock up Shape of the Week honors. Once you walk in the cube and down the spiral staircase and you are immersed in an underground bunker of Apple products. It appears there's a nice big Genius Bar, which certainly is better than the *always packed* 'min-bars' here around Phoenix at the Chandler Fashion Center and Arizona Biltmore Apple Stores.

One odd design choice back in Manhattan is the use of yucky florescent lighting down in there. Looks like a second-grade classroom from a elementary school built in the 70's (but with cool iMacs, of course). Otherwise, it looks like typical Apple design excellence. Last week, when the cover was on the cube it looked the New York version of Mecca. With Apple's recent move back to black in it's iPod and MacBook lineup designs, we were beginning to think it was going to stay black. But it's hard to let light in that way, and we like natural light, so glass will have to do.

Cool shots on flickr (via gothamist): neps, remydwd, dggraphics

Tags: design, apple, retail, architecture, NYC

Lego Digital Designer

Shape of the Week goes to the maker of billions of plastic shapes, LEGO. Our Danish friends now allow you to make whatever you want, virtually, and then order it for real life delivery. As a nice byproduct of that generosity, you become part of a global product design team! Behold the LEGO Digital Designer.

Tags: lego, design, customization

24: Now in iTunes

Jack Bauer comes to the iTunes Music Store. It's about time. 24 hours to be exact. Now I need a video iPod...and a long transatlantic flight...and maybe a battery back up...

Past seasons do not appear to be up yet, but hopefully the whole archive will be available soon. My only concern is the quality. What happens when the mysterious Apple DVR finally appears and I hook it all up, go to play my iPod Video-quality 24 episodes on the HD flatpanel (still need one of those, too) and get poor resolution?

Tags: 24, apple, itunes, ipod

iScratch - Scratch tracks with your iPod

Have you ever adjusted the volume of your iPod with the magic touch wheel and fancied yourself a DJ scratching? Well, here comes iScratch. It really lets you scratch audio files like an analog record using iPod's touch wheel. Requires installation of ipodlinux.

Tip: Pixelsumo

Tags: music, ipod, DJ

Mister Shape May 2006 News

May 1st, 2006. 97 degrees, Sunny here in Arizona.

• Mister Shape Gift Certificates are now available!

• Tomas at the Closet Blog has a Mister Shape interview up.

• I'll be guest blogging in May over at the fabulous BrainFuel.

Thanks for all the orders last month...San Francisco, Toronto, Amsterdam, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Phoenix, London, Paris..alright!

Tags: news, tshirts, design