The Apple South by Southwest Pop-Up Shop Tour

Coverage of SXSW 2011 sponsored by TalkBoxApp.com.

We brought you photos and video from the iPad 2 launch at the Apple pop-up shop in Austin, Texas last week – and now we take you inside for a tour.

Visiting a regular Apple store in North America (or any country for that matter) is already quite an experience – so you can imagine that the excitement level has been dialed to “11″ with the iPad 2. Apple decided to open a special 1-week only store during one of the biggest interactive conferences of the year: South by Southwest Interactive.

So let’s go inside and see what makes this shop so exciting:

We got to this pop-up store early this morning around 10am, about 2 hours before its official opening time of 12 noon. There were already about 15 people in line and another 50 formed behind us by the time the doors opened. They only let 20 people in at a time so that the customer has a great experience and of course to leave a line outside for others to see.

The store itself took over an old bank and was about 3,000 square feet. Decorated in typical Apple Store style with the wood floors and display tables the only thing that was on sale were iPad 2′s and accessories for it like the new covers, iTunes gift cards, earphones and the new Apple Digital AV Adapter.

As you can see in the photo gallery its a fully operational store that apparently had been put together in 12 hours that day started at 5am (from one of the staff member’s recollection) meaning it was being built while people were lining up outside on March 11th.

One of the amazing things is that Apple not only makes amazing products, but that they train up the very best employee’s to sell them. They brought 50 of their superstar Apple staff members from around Texas and had them brought in for the store to deliver exceptional service for an exceptional product. The service the staff provided was so good – we wanted to tip them! Have you ever heard of that from a retail store before?

We were greeted by Lauren who treated us like we were old friends and helped us to get the iPad’s we wanted while we took photos – she waited patiently and with a smile – as we got our shots in. “Take as many photos as you like, just let me know when you’re ready!” Lauren is our official Austin crush!

Payment was quick and we went to the activation table where another staff member helped us to turn on the iPad and check it as well as giving us a cool lesson in using the cover. We wanted the whole experience so we humored him, but ended up we learned new things:

• The iPad 2 knows when it needs to sleep because of magnets in the cover and on the corners of the iPad.
• the cover itself is filled with magnets and you really feel them connect when you fold it up.
• There are no moving parts inside the iPad 2 for the magnets to disrupt.
• The inside of the cover can be folded and used like a squeegee to remove oil and fingerprints from the glass screen.

Sure its pricey, and Apple will make $1 billion alone on the sales of the covers but after all the cases we’ve seen for iPad 1 and iPhones: this one is worth it! Do not think you don’t need it – even the packaging it came in was amazing.

Give us a few days to play with the actual iPad 2 and run it through our usual routine but from first holding it, it does feel incredibly slim even though its only 33% slimmer. The weight is definitely not that different but because its slimmer it seems lighter.

Check out our gallery – and stay tuned for our review and hopefully by that time a Hong Kong release date!

Our SXSW 2011 coverage is made possible by TalkBox – a voice messenger app for iPhone you can download here.

TalkBox Voice Messenger is a dedicated Agent of Sound, the fastest and most direct voice messaging that makes effortless communication useful; diverse applications possible.