For those living in or near Boston, Apple has finally brought you good news- tomorrow, Thursday May 15th, you will be getting your first Boston Apple Store!

The Apple Store Boylston Street “Green Monster” (Image courtesy of Apple)

On April 28th, the facade of the upcoming Boylston Street Apple Store appeared, modeled after the Green Monster and reading “Opening Day. Coming Soon. Apple Store Boylston St.” Last week, ifoAppleStore speculated that the store was set to open next Friday, May 16th. Earlier this week, Apple officially announced the grand opening to take place on Thursday May 15th.

This is the first flagship store launch since then opening of the West 14th Street Apple Store in New York City, back in December of 2007 (which you can read our coverage of here). The new store is said to have 3 floors (like the West 14th Street Store) and over 20,000 square feet of retail space and even a vegetation garden on the rooftop. The Bolyston Street store is confirmed to be Apple’s largest retail store in the United States. At the grand opening, which takes place at 6:00PM tomorrow, Apple will be giving away limited edition T-shirts and “other surprises”. The store will operate under extended hours (8AM-11PM Monday-Saturday; 9AM-7PM Sunday) but will not be open 24/7, like the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York City. You can find directions and a calendar of events on Apple’s website, or read more about the store on ifoAppleStore.

The store is located is located at 815 Boylston Street between Gloucester and Fairfield; Boston, MA 02116.

A map of the surrounding area.

If you are planning on attending or would like to attend, theiLife is still in search of any one willing to report for our us. There are absolutely no requirements and any pictures, videos or text updates are highly appreciated! If you are interested, you will be given access to our FTP servers and a WordPress account to post updates, pictures or videos. Please contact us via AIM, email or by post a comment below.

Geoffrey is a new writer to theiLife.com and will be occasionally posting about various Apple related news. Today he is writing about the recent iMac Speed Bump.

The iMac has been herald the most innovative computer of its time. It was the first truly successful computer to integrate both the monitor and the actual CPU in one unit. While the original iMac was big, bulky, and came in a wide variety of translucent colors, it has been refined over the years. The iMac is by no means an antiquated computer. Over the years, it has grown to become stronger, thinner, faster and sexier. Last month, Apple has continued this trend with the latest refinement.

While some might call the recent iMac upgrade just a speed bump, its really perfection to the already perfect desktop. The new iMac comes with either a 20” screen or a 24” screen, the standard two options since 2007. The 20” model comes with a 250 GB Serial ATA 7200-rpm hard drive that is upgradeable to either a 500 GB hard drive or a 750 GB hard drive. This model also comes with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor that can be upgraded to a 2.66 GHz.

The 24” model is all the new rave in Apples line of computers. The 24” model comes standard with a 2.8 GHz processor and a 320 GB hard drive. But the new 24” iMac can be upgraded to have a 500 GB hard drive, 750 GB hard drive, or even a 1 TB hard drive! It can even have its processor upgraded to 3.06 GHz!

So what does all this mean? This means Apple has once again upgraded the computer of our generation, the computer that set the standards for other manufactures, the computer that more people associate with Apple then any other computer in Apple’s line. Once again Apple has stepped up the standard for all computers to come and the reviews (Macworld/PCMag) agree.

The latest Get a Mac commercial by Apple, about Vista not working like it should. It has just been published to The Daily iLife podcast, which you can subscribe to in iTunes or watch here.

PC is at a help group for “PC’s living with Vista”. The other PC’s there tell him to take it one day at a time and that he is facing the biggest fact of all, that Vista isn’t working as it should. They all wish the Vista problems will go away sooner and a lot easier. One of them says pleasingly that he has been error-free for a week and starts to repeat himself uncontrollably and the others get disappointed.

This is a guest post from Adam Ford of theDigitalLifestyle.tv.

How do you make the Zune better? Well, naturally you add the ability for it to police your content for anything pirated. What’s so wrong with that? You shouldn’t be pirating music or videos, has the RIAA not taught you anything!?!

The story goes that NBC abandoned ship because of Apples tight leash on pricing and their unwillingness to police pirated material. Apparently Microsoft is okay with NBC selling their content for the same price as Apple would have just as long as Microsoft absorbs the difference in cost between that price and the price NBC wants to sell it for. Lets look at that for a moment. If Apple was going to sell an episode of Heroes for $1.99, and NBC wanted to sell that same episode for $6.99 then Microsoft is basically paying NBC $5.00 for each download. I really can’t imagine why Apple wouldn’t want to do that . . . seems like a GREAT business deal.

As if that decision wasn’t confusing enough, Microsoft is working on what I can only assume will be an update to it’s desktop software, to detect bootleg media and disallow it from being transfered to the device.

My question: How does it know? This is the age old question of the thermos. The thermos keeps hot stuff hot and cold stuff cold . . . but how does it know? When I go out and purchase a DVD and use good old handbrake to make a legitimate backup how is the software going to recognize this as being legitimate and allow me to put it on my Zune (DISCLAIMER: I don’t have a Zune, don’t want a Zune, and this whole thing seems like a giant disaster)?

As you can see the move to police your library raises all kinds of concerns. I don’t see how this approach really sells more of anything for Microsoft. It seems like they’re going to lose money on each download AND push the Zune in a less desirable direction (as if poop brown wasn’t enough). I think I’ll just keep my iPod.

theiLife is proud to announce that we served an AJAX based liveblog during WWDC with no issues- and saw over 40,000 unique visits to the website. More stats coming soon.

Check out some articles about WWDC.

This week is yet another normal week for me, so you should see the site full of content all week. My school is ending on Friday- this means I will be officially done with school for the summer. In Apple related news, last week, Apple officially ran out of iPhones online (and in most retail stores). This should certainly foretell future events with the second generation iPhone and it’s upcoming release. Finally, last Friday, I received an invitation to try out Schmaps for the iPhone. After playing around with the private beta, I recommend you check out the now public beta here. Schamp is a great service and the implementation on the iPhone is slick. Have a great day!

The latest Get a Mac commercial by Apple, about Microsoft Office 2008. It has just been published to The Daily iLife podcast, which you can subscribe to in iTunes or watch here.

Macs new Microsoft Office 2008 program has just come out. In the box that PC gives him, is a stress toy for Mac to use when he gets stressed from doing lots more work, which PC begins using as he complains that Microsoft Office is too compatible with Mac and that he wants to switch his files over and he is getting less work then Mac, eventually breaking the toy.

One of the latest Get a Mac commercials which is about the flaws of Vista. It has just been published to The Daily iLife podcast, which you can subscribe to in iTunes or watch here.

Mac is watching PC have a yoga session where the yoga instructor (Judy Greer) is coaching PC in “expelling bad Vista energy” and forgetting Vista’s problems, but when the yoga instructor goes on to complain that Vista screwed up the yoga billing, PC considers switching to pilates.

This week is another normal week for me, with little interuptions to keep content from coming- you should expect articles everyday this week. Now that I am getting more time to spend on the site, The Daily iLife is getting needed attention, among other things on the site. Once Sidney works out his schedule at his new job, podcasting (both video and audio) should resume as well. WWDC looks like it is going to be focused around the iPhone, at least according to the rumors over the past few weeks. Have a great week, and Happy Cinco De Mayo!

The latest iPod commercial has recently been posted online by Apple this week, after airing on a number of prime time television spots. The advertisement, called Gamma features the usual silhouettes dancing to upbeat music, but also introduces a very colorful world of spinning shapes. It has just been published to The Daily iLife podcast, which you can subscribe to in iTunes or watch here.

iPod commercial with music by The Ting Tings (Shut Up and Let Me Go).