back to article Apple to build WORLD'S BIGGEST iStore in Dubai

Apple is planning to build the world's biggest iStore in Dubai - marking the first time it has opened a retail store in the Middle East. The fruity firm is looking for 26 categories of iToilers to work in the United Arab Emirates. Some 13 of these positions are for jobs in the new store. Cupertino wants to recruit everything …

  1. psychonaut

    bad poetry, bureacratic nonsense....

    maybe the sheikh will get strangled by his own lower intestine

    1. Simon Harris
      Thumb Up

      Re: bad poetry, bureacratic nonsense....

      Have an upvote for beating me by seconds to a Hitchhiker's Guide reference!

      1. frank ly

        Re: bad poetry, bureacratic nonsense....

        It might rhyme and have a jaunty rhythm in Arabic. You never know.

        1. dogged

          Re: bad poetry, bureacratic nonsense....

          It doesn't rhyme but it does scan and the words work together nicely. It's very archaic, like reading Beowulf.

  2. Simon Harris

    Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum

    seems to have learned everything he knows about poetry from the Vogons.

  3. Stretch

    They totally deserve each other. Now, which are the bigger set of scum sucking crooks?

  4. Mark 78

    Apple to Build worlds biggest iStore

    Of course they are. If anyone else was building it they would be suing them for copyright violation or something over the name.

    It's like saying Disney have the worlds biggest Disneyland.

    1. stucs201
      Headmaster

      Re: Apple to Build worlds biggest iStore

      I very much doubt Apple are building it. I suspect a local construction company is being paid to do it for them.

  5. dogged

    Dubai's a weird place. It's a city built by people who don't really have any concept of anything bigger than a fishing village, and it shows. I remember it took me forever to figure out what the road system was about until my boss-at-the-time (a close relative of Sheikh Mo's) had me accompany him by helicopter and I got an aerial view of the place. Then it became clear - it's an F1 track with a city in it. I'd be very surprised indeed if something like the Monaco GP didn't eventually happen there.

    As for the rest - immense buildings just because. Soaring wealth and grinding poverty (imported Pakistani workers, for the most part) literally yards apart. Ostentatious water fountains in a place where tapwater is literally more expensive than petrol. Crazy shopping because money is big here but taste hasn't made it that far yet.

    It's a place where all the fun things are banned by law so spending ludicrous amounts of money on nothing worthwhile replaces them.

    As such, I expect Apple to do very well there. Vertu, Rolex and Hugo Boss do.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Dubai's a weird place.

      Google: burj khalifa sewer

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >It's a place where all the fun things are banned by law so spending ludicrous amounts of money on nothing worthwhile replaces them.

      but they still happen anyway

      1. Cliff

        >>but they still happen anyway

        Yeeeessss, but...

        It's all fun and games until it isn't, and it can turn in a heartbeat. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-21783589 for instance. Imagine your wife's just died on honeymoon and the police arrest you for having been drinking when you show up to report it. Ex pat residents can get a legal permit to drink, but it can take years. Visitors cannot. If you delve into the notoriously poorly documented statute of the country, those hotel bars are serving illegally of they don't check your drinking licence. Of course they don't - powerful families own the hotels and the place is powered by hypocrisy, but the police like to show their power now and again.

        Prostitution is rife in a country which is 75% male, but as much as it is blatant in places, the results can be quite severe without the big hotel owners to back people up behind the scenes.

        Drugs, you'd be a first class fucking idiot to go near them, but I know they are available. A German air hostess went to the police to complain that she had been 'spiked' with a hashish sweet, was given a blood test, and spent 4 months in prison awaiting trial - for being the victim.

        Yes, shit goes on and yes most people get away with it most of the time, but don't for a second let your guard down, you'll find how quickly that liberty was mere tolerance of your decadent western ways and money and catch the rough edge of the place. Dubai hasn't got oil worth speaking of (Abu Dhabi has it all, pretty much), it depends on tourism, it depends in this image, but hypocrisy is absolutely running through the creek.

  6. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Will they even bother with the plasticy iPhone 5C?

    I predict that they would sell precisely zero of the cheap(er) and cheerful 5Cs.

    1. Tom 35

      Re: Will they even bother with the plasticy iPhone 5C?

      Just stick some diamonds on it.

  7. TimeMaster T
    Thumb Down

    Correction?

    don't you mean Dubai's slave labor force to build worlds biggest iStore?

    http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/22/abu-dhabi-migrant-workers-conditions-shame-west

    1. dogged

      Re: Correction?

      Who did Johann Hari copy that article from?

    2. Adam Inistrator

      Re: Correction?

      Guardian and Independent. Both left or liberal in the pejorative sense. Both hate money and economic success.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ostentatious, overpriced and available in gold...

    They'll fit right in...

    Although I'm sure some Arab will still have the front, back and sides plated in 24ct gold.

    1. dogged

      Re: Ostentatious, overpriced and available in gold...

      When I was there, I thought the Arabs would be the biggest offenders for that kind of thing but oddly, they're not. I think they're losing the "nouveau riche" thing, or maybe it rubs away slowly over time.

      The absolute worst examples of terrible taste are usually worn by the "wives" of Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese visiting businessmen.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    never going back

    I lived there for 8 years. I don't know how, looking back.

    It's an awful place.

    You cannot gold-plate a turd, although they're desperately trying.

    1. Tom 35

      Re: never going back

      You can gold-plate a turd, but it's still a turd.

  10. Ken 16 Silver badge
    WTF?

    How many Apple products do they have?

    I mean surely they only need one of each on display and a stockroom holding a weekends worth of sales? Why does it have to be big?

  11. Adam Inistrator

    usual ignorant predjudices

    The authors real knowledge of Dubai seems based on the few nasty articles about it in the West over the past few years, couched in the language of propaganda and probably motivated by people who hate or cant understand the idea of any Arabs ever doing any good. Dubai is an oasis of tolerance compared to the majority of the Arab world. London and New York would have been money grubbing and born out of cheap labour so the hypocrisy is rank.

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