You’ve got to love a technological showdown like this:

Barnes & Noble, home of the Nook ebook reader, downsizes its Yale bookstore, giving up half of its real estate and shunting two stores worth of merchandise into one. (Very capably, I might add; the redesign is still roomy and browsey.)
And who got the lease on the vacated space? Apple, creator of the Nook’s nemesis, the iPad.
An Apple store is overdue in this part of the state; an Ivy League university would seem to demand proximity to an Apple store. Yet it’s taken this long.
They’ve put the time to good use at least. The whole summer was devoted to construction on that section of Broadway. (Besides B&N, neighbours include the Thali 2 vegetarian restaurant, a Yale dorm and the shop that sells touristy university t- shirts.) one hopes the inconvenience was worth ir for the other businesses. It certainly helped make the Apple store a shining testament to the hallowed computer company’s sense of style.
A whole new edifice was constructed for the store, a stand-alone bearing with the aesthetics associated with apple products: airy, spacy, freeing. The high ceilings and wide aisles resemble the generous frames and uncluttered appeal of Apple products. Giant windows on all sides lure you to the screens within. The products themselves– phones, computers, pads, laptops, all with that distinctive fruit logo–laid out on inviting try-out tables.
The staff are the eager-beaver, if bleary -yed and unshaven, sort of young men and women who clog the streets around Yale at any given time,
A long line formed Saturday morning for the grand opening, which dissipated quickly once the doors opened, because there’s lot of room in there,
Hyper space, meet new haven retail space. An apple seller on the main downtown marketing route in or fair village. The apples don’t fall far from the elm trees. Welcome to town, technology hounds. We may have lost a bookstore over the summer (Labyrinth on York), but we’ve gained an ebook store.