Meet me at the Apple Store

Walk by the Staten Island Mall's Apple Store on any given night, and the scene is similar: inside are just as many young teens mugging for the digital cameras as hip elders learning how to edit their own movies and cut their own podcasts. The toughs in baggy jeans futz with iPods and try to lay hip-hop tracks on the digital synthesizers (with, often, the computer belching their discordant notes back at them through high-fidelity speakers). And the computer brainiac workers recognizable by their shirts emblazoned with the word "genius" are the most sought-after people in the place.

It's a place where computer geeks and the tech-savvy download, surf and shop in harmony.The customers say they love it.

"I always come in here," says Michael Tedesco, a 20-year-old from Tottenville. "It's like a social attraction."

The Staten Island store's arrival was hailed as a sign that the borough "could be achieving cultural hipitude," by the magazine Time Out New York, which also pointed out that the shorter wait times for technical help at the Island store make it a magnet for Mac lovers from other parts of the city. It also received an accolade from Apple as having some of the fastest service the company offers, which the staffers brag about with little prompting.

"It's the bridge between average Joe and computer elite," says Joshua Toro, one of the store's geniuses, who spends hours every week giving one-on-one lessons newly available in the store.

Toro speaks with casual confidence about today's tech-savvy consumers. Those consumers are using their computers to do what radios, CD players, televisions, desk calendars and even alarm clocks are supposed to do. They are becoming homegrown radio stars by publishing podcasts.

And they are showing up in droves at the Apple Store to learn and play.

Toro says the store has hooked into the changing attitude of electronics customer -- from "How do I use it?" to, "What can I do with it?" -- so that as consumers incorporate these devices into their lives, the Apple's tech support structure becomes an important part of their lives as well.

But, more simply, Apple Stores are seen as cool, and part of the answer to why may lie in their shrewd minimalist design: though all the other electronics-centered stores allow customers to sample and test the merchandise, the light-wood, open-spaced setting of all Apple Stores is uniquely inviting. And the merchandise, ranging from sleek iPods to elegant laptops, resembles works of art. The experience is fully hands-on: shoppers are encouraged to come in to play music, browse the Web, check email -- basically, to do whatever they want on Apple's dime and time. A low table, squishy seats and computers stocked with colorful games appeal to the younger critters.