For months they had us waiting, covering their allegedly innovative architecture with large opaque wood panels. Last night, the panels went down. Today at 5PM, the doors officially opened. I was given a preview tour for members of the press an hour earlier, at 4PM.

The wait was worth it.

The new Montreal Downtown Apple Store, located right in the action on 1321 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, is just plain beautiful. Nothing to do with the first Montreal-area Apple Store, a simple walk-in in a surburbian mall, opened two years ago. This time, it’s a real Apple Store.

My pictures speak for themselves.

However, these pictures can’t show some of the details that struck me the most during my visit. I’m speaking of textures.

From the soft wooden tables to the soft, MacBook Pro-like brushed metal on the walls, to the unique mix of soft and rugged glass on every step of the staircase, textures play a huge role in the shopping atmosphere of this new Apple Store.

First to buy, first to get a refund!

I thought it would be fun to make the first historic buy at the new Montreal Apple Store. Since I badly needed a new headset for my 1.0 iPhone, I asked for a nice headset capable of delivering nice bass while not being too big. I specifically said it was for my iPhone, which implied I needed a headset with an integrated microphone. But the employee who served me was doing her first sale as well, so she didn’t grasp this detail. She sold me a pair of nice Shure headphones, which I bought with much excitement as the first customer ever in this new store. 2 minutes later, I asked for a refund an exchange for another model with an integrated microphone…

At some point, I could feel my hand trembling while I was giving out my credit card. And I felt very stupid.

I knew I was giving in to the stupidest level of fandom. Fandom for a computer manufacturer. Fandom for a trademark. I mean, I worked a long time in advertising and brand awareness, I wrote a whole master’s thesis on deconstructing that bullshit, and still… Still, I fell for the excitement of being the first to buy a product at the new Montreal Apple Store. And I’m still excited. Even after writing this. I can’t help it, this is my true feeling.

I know it’s stupid, and still I’m stupidly proud of it. Proud of giving my money to a salesperson in exchange for a product. A transaction I do every day, that everybody on the planet has been doing every day for the past three thousand years at least. But this transaction on this day somehow felt special, different, and meaningful.

That, my friends, is the smartest form of marketing. Outsmarting the outsmarters. And Apple will always be smarter than most of you in the game of seduction, whatever your level of marketing awareness, disbelief, reason and/or cynism.

One thing they have going for them is that they do deliver. The store is REALLY beautiful. They could have built it with half the budget, half the efforts, half the details. But they went all the way, like in everything they do. All companies should do this, but Apple reminds us it’s actually a rare quality.