Say what you like about Apple (and I’ve never held back from some harsh words about the brand) but the team in Cupertino certainly knows how to get us coming back for more.

However ridiculously expensive the products are, however easy it is to smash those screens and however crazy it is that the phones, tablets and laptops have to be hidden in distinctly un-gorgeous cases to avoid them looking like they’ve been dragged across gravel… we still stand in line.

So it was no surprise that the crowds thronged the Regent Street, London store at its reopening this weekend. The Foster and Partners-designed store has been closed or partially closed for ages thememo.com estimated that the closure could have cost the firm between £20m and £36.8m in lost sales alone. Add on the rerun costs and all I can say is… eek.

At least the result looks like it was all worth the effort. The stark, uninviting look of the old store has gone to be replaced with trees, a living wall of plants, some comfy leather seating and (can you believe it?) iPhones, iPads and MacBooks that aren’t tied down any more. Yes, you can pick them up and walk around the store with them.

But back to my main point of how we keep coming back for more. I saw a report last week that showed just how true this is.

Apparently, the release of the iPhone 7 boosted weekly footfall in UK specialist ‘telco’ stores by 18.8%, according to research by Ipsos Retail Performance.

Although that wasn’t as much as of an uplift as the iPhone 6 or 5 provided (39% and 29% respectively), the release of a new iPhone still commands more store interest than its Samsung rivals.

March’s release of Samsung’s Galaxy S7 resulted in a 3.1% rise in weekly traffic during the first fortnight over the previous month, far less than the S6, which generated 8.9% more shoppers.

Ipsos doesn’t say how much traffic the Galaxy Note 7 generated before exploding phones generated one of the biggest product recalls in history and possibly the biggest PR nightmare this century. Still, at least Samsung has managed to grab the headlines back from Apple in the past fortnight…