Since last week there have been rumors indicating a possibility conference Apple for employees of the company's US stores. Today, an Apple employee unofficially confirmed that on May 22, conferences will be held in Apple stores in the US, but it is not known yet and it will be discussed there. On June 6, WWDC 2011 will take place and it is assumed that Apple will prepare its employees for the possible launch of new services instead of MobileMe. On the other hand, this week Apple is celebrating 10 years since it opened its first store, so it is possible to talk about promotions or who knows what else within the Apple stores.
We will find out next Sunday what was discussed in these meetings and I for one hope it will be about the new iCloud and maybe something interesting about iPhone 5 and Mac OS X Lion.
UPDATED: It seems that Apple will organize a celebration on May 19 when it will launch a new product. Those from BGR they received information indicating that new hardware equipment is being received in Apple stores and on the night of May 18 to 19, Apple store employees will draw black curtains over the windows and arrange the stores probably for the launch of a product or for some promotion.
- There's an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday.
- During the overnight shift, it's going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.
- There are a wide variety of roles, we're told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.
- Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to arrive on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after closing on Saturday night.
- Apple employees will be putting up black curtains at all stores so that people walking outside cannot see inside.
- Employees have had to download gigabytes of data from Apple corporate labeled, "training" in a password-protected zipped folder that won't be accessible to managers or anyone else until Saturday afternoon.
- Finally, all Apple retail stores have mandatory meetings on Sunday, May 22nd. Most meetings are scheduled for the morning, but there are evening meetings as well.
