This is simply amazing. I can only imagine how quickly these initial stores will be closed down. They will spring up again like weeds, but these first ones will be probably be closed with in a few weeks.
I really love that last picture with the spelling mistake "Apple Stoer".
I seriously thought that it had simply been torn down and replaced with a bank in the mean time – hey, it’s China. That could happen.
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.
Were we Americans this crass and exploitive in the late 1800's? Not rhetorical, but a genuine question. I've heard the opinion expressed that we indeed were.
America used to be notorious in the 18th and 19th centuries for ignoring copyrights and patents filed in Europe.
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”.
I think it's more a result of the fact that China produces little intellectual property of its own right now. Enforcing copyright would raise costs, hinder development of copycat industries, and deplete the mountain of foreign exchange they've accumulated through exports. In addition, unlike most small countries that don't have domestic IP industries, China is not susceptible to US and European pressure.
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.
From what I've seen, the Chinese don't "get" the aesthetic systems of other cultures as readily or completely as the Japanese did. The Japanese seem to have a distinct edge over everyone else in East Asia in this regard.
As it happens, I bought yesterday a volume of Anthony Trollope's _North America_ (1862) in a used book store yesterday and noticed the passage
"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.
Even if Apple does do this, there are going to be tons of copycats throughout China. I'll bet we'll see some interesting variations like an apple with bite on the left side or a black apple on a silver background.
I seriously doubt the Chinese police will care. Maybe if it was in a city where Apple had a factory and they had cultivated relationships with local officials, but out in the boonies they have no power.
Maybe slightly, but no more than it would be for some chinese company to put pressure on the local police in San Francisco, and likely quite a bit less.
When I was in China in 2006 I wondered into a fake Nike store of similar quality (In a residential neighborhood of Beijing). I too thought it was a real store, the only thing that gave it away was when I actually picked up the shoes in the store, I noticed all the swooshes were upside down!
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.
Yeah, I have to say I don't quite get the point of that. The original WP theme would look absolutely fine on an iPad. Otoh, the onswipe theme looks a bit weird and has annoying scrolling issues, and takes ages to load too. Not quite sure what it adds to anything other than a vague sense of frustration...
Yea, I just had a vary surreal moment reading about this.
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.
This reminds me of how Tower Records opened their first store in Japan, when a fake Tower Records store was already operating in Sapporo... (see http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/MTS-Inc-Com...) Interestingly enough, the Japanese branch became independent a few years ago and is still in business, when the US stores have now disappeared.
It looks like they are selling genuine Apple products. So the only thing this store is guilty of is using the "Apple Store" name without permission. There is nothing illegal about running a store that sells only Apple products, and decorating it in a matching way. It is quite common in China to see small stores that sell only Lenovo, only Dell or only Sony products, and they are not usually run by the brands.
It looks like they are selling genuine Apple products.
Oh please. What evidence are you basing this judgement on, the blurry cameraphone pictures from this blog post? Magic? Intuition that of course a counterfeit store, operated by a third party, will only carry genuine items?
> There is nothing illegal about running a store that sells only Apple products
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.
I misread the title as "Fake apple stories" and thought "how interesting can that be?"
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 figured that some of the higher-level employees would have to be in on it, and any people from the REAL Apple would send them into a panic. In this case, maybe all the store employees, from top to bottom, really were clueless.
Funny I should see this today. I was just reading the wikipedia page on "Simulacra and Simulation":
"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?
A lot of the official Apple resellers in non-US countries have also lifted the entire Apple store look -- wood tables with products, white walls, lots of glass, white banner signs. The only difference is they don't call it an Apple Store.
I feel really terrible for the employees who work at these stores, thinking they are working for Apple. I think about how I felt when I got a job I really wanted at that age, and the joy they must have felt when they were hired, and telling all of their friends and family that they were Apple employees.
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."
Real, legitimate Apple products are going to be something like six times more expensive than the counterfeits.
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.
There are countless examples of this. I too was amazed at how widespread the cloning was when I visited China. I recall this massive 'Hazma 6' billboard along one highway in Shanghai and being warned not to drink a particular bottle of water in Dalian. Who rips off bottle water? China!
Who can forget the ripoff X5 that they attempted to put on display in Frankfurt? (http://goo.gl/oPD5y) BMW wasn't having it.
65 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadI really love that last picture with the spelling mistake "Apple Stoer".
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/10/fake-apple-stor/
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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)