Don't forget, Dallas-area Mac fans: tomorrow marks the grand opening of the shiny new "Shops At Willow Bend" mall in Plano, Texas-- and of the Apple retail store contained therein. Apple has even posted a page devoted entirely to its third retail location, including lovely Aquaesque maps and full directions from multiple starting points. Given that they've gone to all this trouble to tell you how to get there, we assume you're all calling in sick to go wait in line for several hours, right? Right?

C'mon, true Mac fans are masters of waiting in lines-- anyone who's ever tried to get into a Macworld Expo keynote address knows that. And the really great thing is, waiting in line with a slew of like-minded Mac freaks is actually a fun experience; everyone's excited, enthusiastic, and eager to chat about the platform. We speak from years of experience at the Javits Center in New York, and we're assuming that the line-waiting dynamic at Apple store openings is potentially even more fun, because you're part of a mob of Mac fanatics who are essentially taking over an entire mall. If the AtAT staff lived within thirty miles of Plano, you can bet we'd be there.

Need even more encouragement? Well, okay; how about free promotional garments? Faithful viewer Tim Rivera noticed that if you load up the page for Apple in Willow Bend's online directory, under "Special Events," there's a "Grand Opening Special": in addition to "equipment and software demonstrations," the store will be giving out "free t-shirts for the first 1000 customers." So there's one more reason to go: the chance to put off doing your laundry for another day. Now go add your body to the biomass and show the rest of the mall what Apple freaks are made of.

On a side note, we're glad to hear that Apple hasn't developed some sort of distaste for t-shirts in general, because we were a little concerned after the Expo a couple of weeks ago. See, in past years, Apple has always thrown shirts out into the crowd during its booth demonstrations, and the AtAT staff makes it a point not to return to Boston without having snagged at least a couple of those choice chunks of apparel. This year, however, the shirts were nowhere to be seen. We blame the economy-- or just possibly a last-minute decision not to unveil the LCD iMac, whose image adorned the hundreds of shirts Apple was then forced to keep under wraps. (From our perspective, it's just as well; it's not like we weren't already lugging around enough of our own shirts, after all...)