Caption Contest: HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang drops by Apple's Palo Alto Store

So what if Apple might be suing your company for millions and billions of dollars? You're Cher Wang and Cher Wang shops wherever she damn well pleases. HTC's co-founder and Chairwoman was recently photographed taking a leisurely gander at Apple's wares, with husband Wen-Chi Chen -- who just happens to be CEO of VIA Technologies -- tagging along as well. The Palo Alto Geniuses look to have been their usual friendly selves, though their failure to put an iPhone in Mrs. Wang's hands qualifies as a major missed opportunity in our eyes.

Thomas: "In Taiwan, iPhone means horse."
Josh F.: "Go ahead, cuff me if you can."
Dana: "A stylus! You know. You hold it like this."
Vlad: "Cher Wang thought impersonating a zombie would help her blend in with the Apple Store patrons. As we can tell from the unperturbed employees, she was right."
Brad: "If you can guess which hand the candy's in, you win!"
Terrence: "...and this is my trusty servant Patsy."
Amar: "I'm sorry, Mrs. Wang, we're all out of dirtbikes."

Engadget Chinese

mobile01

Apple Store celebrates 10th anniversary with 2.0 experience, iPads locked in Lucite (video)

We already wished the Apple Store a happy 10th anniversary, looking back to see what's changed (and what hasn't) in a decade of retail presence. Now Apple's tweaking things even more, launching the so-called Apple Store 2.0. iPads have been scattered throughout, deployed to run as mini-kiosks and providing information about various products on display. Users can learn more about any particular gadget on the tablets, figure out pricing, and even hit a button to have a sales associate swing by -- for when turning around and saying "excuse me" is just too much work. The new experience has already launched in Australia and we're guessing will hit American stores later today, though we wouldn't be shocked if Apple has a few extras surprises for us in the next day or so as well.

iTechVision

macstories

Nostalgia: Steve Jobs tours the first Apple Store at Macworld 2001 (video)

Since we'd rather not attempt to pick out a birthday present for the retail store that has everything, we're breaking out the home movies to see just how far it's come in the past decade. Here's some footage from Macworld 2001, in which a chipper Jobs takes us behind the wood barricade for a "little private tour" of the first ever Apple Store in Tysons Corner, VA, showing off a rear-projection screen for playing commercials and debuting the hyperbolically-named Genius Bar. All said, not that much seems to have changed with the stores in the past ten years, save, of course, for the inventory -- of particular note are the MP3 player and PDA sections, both populated with third-party hardware. Apple would scorch the earth of the music player market later that year with introduction of the iPod. The personal organizer still had a little time left, but surely even back then the iPhone was a twinkle in old Steve's eye.