With spectacular sales and levels of customer devotion normally reserved for the more intensive cults (the ones that use drugs and electric shocks) Apple is the envy of other tech companies. But while the likes of Microsoft desperately streamline their products to appear more like Apple, one chain of stores dared to just be Apple. Without telling them.
A traveling tech blogger has documented her discovery of fake “Apple Stores” (and even “Apple Stoers”) in Kunming. Protip: Apple doesn’t actually write “Apple Store” on its signs. The capital of China’s Yunnan province has almost six million residents but absolutely no official Apple stores. Someone clearly recognized the wasted opportunity and decided to do something about it, where “something” means “rolling in piles of money.”
 
While a single traveling blogger isn’t a forensic examination, we’d be much more surprised if this wasn’t true. If Apple are going to make the whole world want its hardware without giving them the chance to buy, opportunists will do it for them. Apparently, even the staff believe they’re working in an authentic store, which is a great trick if you can manage it. Simply setting up an entire replacement store is brilliant. It’s the techno toy version of The Sting, where even the actors are being conned, and someone is making an awful lot of money. And is doubtless ready to disappear the instant Steve Jobs sends anyone to so much as the same part of the continent. Until then, though, the money keeps on rolling in.