Archived Post

AWT News Update: November 27, 2017

Welcome to Cyber Monday! Today’s podcast give you a quick hint on one place you can find some great deals, and then recounts some of the Apple news for the day:

  • Apple released four new TV ads today, all of which focus on iPhone X, Face ID and Animoji
  • Four cities around the world will honor the 10th anniversary of Urban Sketchers with sketch walks provided by Apple retail stores in those locales
  • A new Apple store will open in Brooklyn, NY this Saturday. Remember, you can usually get free and special commemorative t-shirts at store openings!
  • A Japanese Mac blog says that Apple may be opening more stores in Kyoto and Tokyo in the next three years

The text version of the podcast can be read below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Apple News readers need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.

Text Version

This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update podcast for Monday, November 27th, 2017.  If you have any money left after Black Friday and still need to do some shopping for Cyber Monday, we’d appreciate it if you could point your favorite Mac or iOS browser to deals.appleworld.today and check out the latest deals including our Pay What You Want Mac Bundle.  

Apple released four new TV ads for the iPhone X today, all of which highlight Face ID and Animoji — the features provided by the True Depth camera on the front of the phone. One 39-second ad is called “Animoji Yourself”, and features a woman and several Animoji singing along to the song “All Night”. Another 39-second spot, “Introducing Face ID” shows how easy Face ID is, how it sees right past fashion and makeup changes, and how it can be used with Apple Pay. “Opens in the Dark” is a16-second ad showing how the TrueDepth camera and Face ID work even in complete darkness, while “Knows You When You Change” also highlights Face ID. It will be interesting to see if Samsung and other competitors find these new ads to be fodder for parody ads…

If you live in San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Berlin and enjoy sketching on your iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, you may want to take advantage of some upcoming Today at Apple programs that will commemorate the 10th anniversary of Urban Sketchers. The group is a nonprofit organization made up of artists who practice drawing on location in the cities, towns and villages they either live in or travel to. These sessions will offer “sketch walks” with well-known members of the Urban Sketchers community, during which you can not only see their technique but practice drawing the same subjects they’re drawing. Go to apple.com/today to see if one of the Urban Sketchers walks is scheduled at your Apple Store. 

Apple will open its second Brooklyn, New York retail store on Saturday, Dec. 2 at 10 AM local time. The new store is an architectural gem, located in the new 300 Ashland Building in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. A rendering of the store location shows a glass-sided structure that looks like a prow of a ship, as the building is located on a triangular piece of land. We’re not sure if the Apple retail store will be in that part of the building, but it’s likely since the rest of the building is residential. The official address of the store is123 Flatbush Avenue, and this will be the 11th store in New York City proper.

In other Apple retail news, the Japanese blog Mac Otakara says that the company is planning on opening a store in Kyoto Japan by 2019, and may also open two other stores in Tokyo in time for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games that will be held in the city. 

That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.

Steve Sande
the authorSteve Sande
Steve is the founder and former publisher of Apple World Today and has authored a number of books about Apple products. He's an avid photographer, an FAA-licensed drone pilot, and a really bad guitarist. Steve and his wife Barb love to travel everywhere!