Edible Apple

Free shawarma with every new MacBook Pro purchase may soon become a reality for Apple fans in Israel. Okay, so Apple isn’t going to give away free food anytime soon, or ever for that matter, there are rumblings that the company may open a large Apple Store in Jerusalem sometime in the next three years.

Apple is reportedly in negotiations with the real estate company Bet Yair to acquire a sprawling 5,000 square meter plot of land located at the Western entrance to Jerusalem and conveniently located next to a train stop that shuttles folks from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and back. Somewhat mysteriously, the planned retail store will be home to the world’s first Apple Digital Library, but there’s no indication as to what that actually means.

According to the Jerusalem Post, “directors of Apple in Israel recently toured the site and reportedly said they wanted to bring the country’s largest Apple store to Jerusalem for symbolic reasons.”

As it stands now, Apple’s presence in Israel is somewhat limited to the extent it only has distribution agreements via reseller iDigital which opened up the first iDigital Apple Store in Ramat Aviv in September 2008.

Update: It’s not Apple itself that will be opening up the planned Jerusalem location, but again, iDigital, Apple’s trusty local Israeli Apple reseller.

In any event, this rumor sounds ambitious, but given the proposed size (5,000 sq meters!) and the political implications of Jerusalem, we don’t envision this happening anytime soon.

via Jpost