with Jason Anthony Guy
Supported by Fastmail
Sponsor: Fastmail

Fast, private email hosting for you or your business. Try Fastmail free for up to 30 days.

Affiliate link. Learn more.

Apple Store (and More) Locations from September’s ‘Awe Dropping’ Event

It started with my question to a group of retired Apple friends as we watched the Apple September event:

I missed which Apple Store Kaiann is at; anyone know?

One friend guessed Dubai, suggesting the establishing shots “looked like the Middle East,” but I was doubtful Apple would fly one of its VPs to the Middle East for a short video shoot.

Besides, those opening shots kind of looked like Miami Beach to me, if I could trust my years of watching Miami Vice and Burn Notice. So I went through that segment again and spotted two landmarks: The Carlyle and the Leslie Hotel. A search in Maps confirmed those were in Miami Beach (yay TV!), and a check on Apple’s Find a Store page narrowed it down quickly to Apple Aventura.

Apple Aventura, as seen in the video.
That scalloped roofline was unmistakable. Image courtesy of Apple.com.

Now I was curious: Could I identify all of the Apple stores shown in the video?

And just like that, a quest was born.

I expected it would be a chore—rewarding, but still. Finding Aventura involved scrubbing through that section of the video to identify landmarks, then combing through a list of possible stores until I found a matching photo.

As I was familiar with only a handful of Apple stores, and I wasn’t sure how many were shown during the event, it took a few days to properly motivate myself to do a full rewatch, dreading, as I was, the prospect of laboriously scrubbing through an hour-plus video, painstakingly identifying any tiny detail that would finally unlock the mystery of each location.

I needn’t have worried.

There were only a handful of stores Apple people spoke from. Some stores were gimmes. Others were either iconic enough or had easily discernible landmarks, making them (relatively) easy to find.

But the biggest reason this exercise was not the slog I anticipated was ChatGPT. In April, OpenAI released an update that added image analysis, giving ChatGPT the ability to deduce locations from images. I was impressed (and scared) by it then, and its performance here was remarkable, nailing 17 of 20 locations (85%) on the first try, and identifying the rest through extended prompting. (When it was wrong, though, it was hilariously wrong.)

Regardless of the ease or difficulty in finding the right store, once found, it was immediately identifiable: the architecture of each store was unique and unmistakable—and, of course, stunningly beautiful.

The process

The workflow for identifying locations was straightforward, if manual: I paused the video and took screenshots of each location, which I then fed into ChatGPT. For each location, I first tried using my own knowledge, plus landmark clues, to identify it.

A 6x3 grid of screenshots showing several locations.
Some of the screenshots used to identify each location.

There were four types of locations I identified (though I’d started this quest with only the first one in mind):

  1. Apple Store locations with presenters (five stores).
  2. Non-Apple Store locations with presenters (four spots).
  3. Apple Store locations in flyovers/beauty shots (seven stores).
  4. Apple Park locations (four locations).

I easily identified all of the Apple Park locations, having worked for several years in and around the campus. Likewise, I’ve spent countless hours at Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino and Union Square in San Francisco.

The Cube at Fifth Avenue is iconic, and the Chicago skyline and the Tribune building behind Michigan Avenue made that a quick find (I’ve also visited both).

(It turns out all of the Apple Store presentation locations were in major American cities: New York, San Francisco, Cupertino, Chicago, and Miami. Having seen those skylines or views hundreds of times helped narrow the field of search considerably.)

The flyovers and non-store locations were the toughest; I relied almost exclusively on ChatGPT here, validating each answer independently through online searches (including Apple’s Find a Store).

In some cases, ChatGPT identified stores confidently but incorrectly. Fortunately, it was easy enough to check and inform it when it was wrong. (It was fun watching it spin its wheels.)

The locations

I’ve timestamped each segment to the event video, and linked to the Apple Store where relevant. For non-Apple Store locations, I’ve linked to a reference site.

I’m about 99% confident in my results. If I got something wrong (or somehow missed a location), please let me know! I’m on Mastodon (preferred) and Bluesky, or you can email me.

On to the locations!

Flyovers

These are beauty shots, no Apple presenters. All are from the first few minutes and are on-screen for just a second or two; you can watch straight through from 1:17 until Tim Cook starts to speak.

Apple Stores

These are locations with an Apple presenter. I’ve included the person and their segment.

Apple Park

Spots in and around Apple Park, Cupertino with an Apple presenter. I’ve included the person and their segment.

Non-Apple Locations

Locations with an Apple presenter. I’ve included the person and their segment.

Final thoughts

To wrap this up, some thoughts on the Visitor Center, using ChatGPT, the one spot I can’t confidently pin down, and a brief note of thanks for a couple of the tools I used to put this together .

Staging Apple Park Visitor Center

This section caught my attention. Behind Stan Ng you can see product tables, a product wall, and a Genius-like bar with stools. None of that is normally there: that section of the store usually holds an Augmented Reality model of Apple Park and has a blank back wall. At first I thought it was a composite shot, but you can see the depth of the (physical) shelves at 23:04. The space was completely redressed just for this video.

This isn't how this section of the store normally looks.

ChatGPT

I’d rate ChatGPT’s performance highly, but when it failed, it failed hard. There are plenty of juicy nuggets in those failures, but in the interest of space, I’ll limit it to a few highlights:

  • It initially identified Apple Al Maryah Island in Abu Dhabi as Apple Dubai Mall, stating confidently: “The golden carbon-fiber roof, the dramatic water features cascading down both sides of the approach, and the positioning between the two massive hotel/office towers make it unmistakable. This store is famous for its kinetic ‘Solar Wings’ that open to provide shade and views of the Dubai Fountain. […] I’d put it at 95% confidence.” It assuredly noted that “The water-stepped plaza and the gold roof are signature features of Apple Dubai Mall.”
Apple Dubai Mall. It doesn’t have, as far as I can tell, “dramatic water features cascading down both sides.” Image courtesy of Apple.com.
Mumbai… Miami. Easily confused. Apple BKC image courtesy of Apple.com.
  • For Apple Downtown Brooklyn, it incorrectly guessed Tower Theatre (“wait no, wrong coast”), Williamsburg, Upper East Side, landing eventually on the right store, but the wrong address. When I pointed that out, it spiraled, again guessing Williamsburg, “Apple Upper West Side’s little sibling” (what?), a couple of seemingly nonexistent stores (“The triangular plan, diagonal steel supports, and the elevated plaza setting are unmistakable: this is Apple Store, Washington Heights” and Pittsburgh/Carnegie Mellon), before finally returning both the correct store and the correct address.
I guess all Brooklyn stores look alike. Apple Williamsburg image courtesy of Apple.com.

Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve

This is the one spot I have very little confidence is right. I’m comfortable stating it’s in Northern California, in the East Bay hills… and that’s it. I’m relying 100% on ChatGPT’s assessment here, but it’s worth noting that it first suggested Mount Diablo State Park. Both seem plausible. If you know the spot, please get in touch!

Black Diamond Mines Regional Park… maybe?

Tools

Most of the process of putting this piece together was in the writing and verification, but I wanted to highlight two tools that made things easier: BBEdit and Retrobatch.

BBEdit was critical in creating the timestamped links, taking a list of times, locations, and URLs that looked like this:

1:17 - Pudong, China:  https://www.apple.com.cn/retail/pudong/

1:18 - Al Maryah Island, Abu Dhabi: https://www.apple.com/ae/retail/almaryahisland/
…

And converting it to Markdown (using grep) that looked like this:

- [1:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3KnMyojEQU&t=1m17s) - [Pudong][pudong], China

- [1:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3KnMyojEQU&t=1m18s) - [Al Maryah Island][AlMaryahIsland], Abu Dhabi
…

It also made it easy to sort the locations alphabetically and by timestamp so I could include the tl;dr below. I’ve been using BBEdit for most of its 30+ year history. It’s literally the first app I install on any new Mac.

The second tool that proved invaluable was Retrobatch. Each screenshot was taken from YouTube in full screen mode, which shows the video title at the top and playback controls at the bottom. As those elements never shift, Retrobatch could crop each image at specific coordinates to remove those areas (and to make grids, which I then further edited using Acorn, from the same developer).

Retrobatch workflow to crop screenshots.

BBEdit and Retrobatch (and Acorn) are created by small, indie developers, and are among the best apps on the platform.

TL;DR

If you’re just looking for a list of the stores featured in the video, here’s a handy, alphabetical list:

And here’s each location in the order they were in the video:

If you enjoy this curated collection of eclectic ephemera, subscribe by email or follow in RSS to get new posts automatically.

(Follow on Mastodon, Bluesky, or LinkedIn.)

Support the site with a tip if you’d like.

Previous:
Fat Ham
Next:
Calendar Icon’s Lost Sentimentality