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    When people who seemed to be bouncers finally let us in at around 8:02 PM we were in heaven as we grabbed our own copies of Mac OS X Panther v. 10.3 and ran to the counter to buy them. Upon reaching the downstairs "Buy" counter we encountered a giant line, but due to a helpful Apple Store employee, we were redirected to an empty checkout area upstairs which replaced the Genius Bar for The Night of the Panther only. After buying Panther and receiving über cool Panther Dog Tags we started taking some pictures and walked over to the theatre where a Panther demo was just starting.

Photo Gallery:

Waiting in line outside The Apple Store Soho »

Take a look inside the Apple Store during the Night of the Panther »

    After a little while of watching the presentation some of us began to want to actually use Panther, luckily 10.3 was installed on all of the Apple Store computers.

    So, what kind of "gifts" did we receive? There wasn't much else besides the Panther dog tags but there were, yes you guessed it, free tubes of wrapping paper. Possibly one of the most random giveaways ever, free wrapping paper. Many of us took two or three tubes for no reason whatsoever. One of the weirdest things about the wrapping paper is that there were no Apple logos on the paper itself. That was it for gifts, NaoPress reps were really hoping for some free shirts but after asking an Apple staffer they were told that you have to work for an Apple Store to get one and that "Apple carefully screens employees to make sure they don't want to work for Apple just to get a free shirt." We highly dispute this but it is possible.

    While on the second floor we spied the guy dressed up as an iMac, with an AOL 5.0 trial CD halfway inside his disc drive, get escorted into an elevator by a women and an Apple staffer. We then went over to the kids section and sat down on the blob "chairs" and laid out our laptops and Panther boxes. Upon opening our laptops we were in musical bliss as many iTunes shared libraries appeared and we were able to Rendevous iChat with ourselves and others inside (and outside) the store. Just a brief thought: imagine if you lived across the street from an Apple Store, talk about free internet access. We also opened up our Panther boxes and had a look inside and found that, as always, not much documentation had accompanied this Mac OS update. But....who cares anyway?

    After about another hour of hanging out, walking around and having a look at the continuous loop Panther demo going on in the theatre, we decided to leave after having an awesome time.

    Microsoft has nothing on the swaths of Apple fans who showed up for The Night of the Panther. We at NaoPress had a great time not just because of Panther but because we were with fellow Apple fans who actually like their operating system and the products they use. By the way, Panther is awesome! Check back soon at NaoPress for a review of Mac OS X Panther v10.3.

October 31st, 2003