Experiences of an Apple Fan across the world - Part 4: Hong Kong
By Senthil
Another of my Mac travelogue
and this time it is my experiences
in Hong Kong. I have just three
more - Sydney, Brisbane – Australia,
Barcelona – Spain and Singapore
to recount, the rest is all
covered. Now that I have written
four of my experiences, I realized
that I am just penning what I
went through and did not cover
these experiences from your perspective.
Hopefully I am going
to rectify that mistake this time –
there should be a purpose in narrating
my experiences and some
benefits for you since you have
taken the trouble to read this.
Hong Kong – what a city! I have
been there three times in the last
one year and every trip has been
an experience in itself. Shopping,
eating, and just wandering aimlessly
amongst the shopping districts
of Hong Kong is something
I look forward to every time I visit
there. Since I am an Apple fan
and as I mentioned that visiting
Apple stores in any of the new
cities I visit is sacrosanct, I did not
miss an opportunity to explore
the Apple stores in Hong Kong.
My favorite haunting place is
Wanchai Computer mall. Take the
MTR to Wanchai station and exit
through A4 exit and take the left
turn and you come across this
huge mal. Wow!! Abode for Hong
Kong geeks and IT enthusiasts.
You can spend the whole day
exploring the latest stuff here.
You can get the originals as well
as the Chinese made, since the
“mass” production houses are
just a few hours away. You want a
Hewlett Packard (HP) or Jewlett
Hackard (JH – of course you
can’t differentiate between the
HP logo and the JH logo). Every
brand has it’s clone just that they
might have a different alphabet
replaced somewhere in the spelling
but the beauty is that the
name would sound very similar
if you pronounce it. The same
goes for most of the branded
stuff – I came across so many
Kalvin Cliens, Pommy Tillifiger,
In fact, a road side cart guy was
selling Tommy pull my Finger
T-Shirts. Unlike in other parts
of the world, where you hardly
find any presence of Apple in the
computer malls, here you come
across stores which sell Apple
products. I found quite a few of
them selling Apple software but
no hardware and some of them
selling old Mac books and Macs.
Though I spent quite some time
in the mall, I could not find an
Apple store here, maybe I missed
it. I am sure there has to be an
Apple store in this mall. Luckily
for me, the Apple store was close
to the place where I was staying
(Marco Polo) in Kowloon. I found
this accidentally. One of the days,
I just finished my work quickly
and came back to explore the
area where I was staying and to
my surprise, the Apple store was
just a few minutes away from
Marco Polo. Once I found this,
the next few hours, rather till the
store closed, ie., till 10PM I was
in the store exploring what they
had to offer. For once, this store
was crowded unlike most of the
Apple stores and the guys manning
the store were fast, courteous
and thoroughly professional.
Also the range of products from
the Apple stable and Apple
world were amazing. They had
three floors displaying all kinds
of Apple stuff: iPods, Macbooks,
Macbook pro, imacs, software,
books – name it and you could
get it here. What was nice was
the way the products were displayed,
it was easy to feel them,
work on them and browse endlessly
without anyone hovering
over you to sell some thing. The
best demo of a MacBook that
I have seen was here. The guy
was too good. He showed the
power of what a MacBook could
do. Most of the sales guys end
up showing the feature without
highlighting the use of the feature,
whereas this guy was at his
best. For every feature he could
reel out two benefits. The way he
showed off iPhoto, PhotoBooth,
and iMovie was amazing. I think
he knew what was my soft spot
and went for the kill. Unfortunately
for him, I was as undecided
about buying a MacBook
then as I am now though I regret
not picking up the MacBook in
Hong Kong as the price differential
between Dubai and Hong
Kong is almost 20-25%. Almost
all the Apple products in Hong
Kong were far cheaper than in
most of the places I visited and
definitely cheaper than in UAE.
I guess, one can come close to experiencing
the Apple halo here. I
guess the price differential must
be because of the size of the
market. From what I hear, Hong
Kong and Singapore are supposed
to be the biggest markets
for Apple in Asia outside Japan.
Inspite of the size of the market
they don’t have iTunes yet. Could
it be because Apple wants to
have one iTunes store for entire
Asia or would they have different
stores for different countries
in Asia, if that is the case then I
guess we poor souls have to wait
for another decade before UAE
can have it’s store. There are one
another computer mall which is
worth visiting – Windsor House,
three floors dedicated to IT and
yes, you come across Apple products
other than iPod. Hope you
enjoyed reading this experience
and you could get some sense of
what you can expect if you go to
the Apple store in Hong Kong.