This weekend featured the grand opening of Apple’s latest retail store, Scottsdale Quarter, in beautiful Scottsdale, Ariz. As evidenced by looking at the front of the building, this particular store quickly stands out among the rest of Apple’s retail lineup.

Hello, New Architecture

A few weeks ago, Ron Johnson was featured in USA Today discussing new changes that were coming to retail stores, including more Genius Bar space and larger tables to feature even more products. As you can see, the Scottsdale Quarter store is one of the first new retail store to incorporate some of these new design elements.

With features such as a front and rear made of all glass and a beautiful 75-foot skylight that spans the length of the store, Apple has clearly designed this location to take advantage of Arizona’s abundance of natural light. Additionally, the 20-foot ceilings and spacious entry area help to accent the more open feel of the store.

The Return of the Family Room Concept

The back of the store is similar to most stores but features a unique split Genius Bar with tables in the middle for One to One sessions. Recent store designs have utilized the back walls near the Genius Bar to feature additional third-party products, but this departure moves Apple’s idea of the “Family Room” back to its core with the rear section of the store entirely devoted to services. The split Genius Bar should help alleviate crowding during busy times and allow the store flexibility to run one bar as a Mac queue and another for iPod and iPhone queues if needed.

The first three images below are from Apple.com. A special thanks to photographer Brian Hancock for the opening day photos; you can view more from his web site.

apple.com, 9 May 1998 [via]

Noted blogger and podcaster Daniel Eran Dilger writes today at Roughly Drafted on Leopard and the History and Future of Mac OS X on PowerPC.

For those of you, like our own Stephanie Guertin, who are running on older PPC systems, Dilger lays out why support for the PowerPC isn’t going away anytime soon. With an informative examination of historical Apple products, his article provides a sound argument for G4 and G5 owners to stay calm.

His article (as well as his blog in general) is worth a read whether you’re panicking about support for that PowerBook you bought just before the MacBook Pro was announced, or you merely want a refresher on the history of Apple’s products and CEOs during the dark ages (the years when Jobs was gone).