Apple Store shoppers rescued from glass elevator

The six students were visiting Manhattan as part of a school trip, one wrote in a blog posting about the incident. She said all but herself wound up stuck inside the captivating gizmo for about 45 minutes while the police were called to the scene.

As the students waited to be rescued, Apple Store employees used step-stools to slip bottles of water through the elevator's erratically opening and closing doors. All the students eventually exited safely once police leaked the hydraulic lines, though some were reported to have received minor burns.

The elevator is part of the $9 million 32-foot glass cube that rests atop the new Apple store in the plaza of the General Motors building on Fifth Avenue. It's wrapped by a circular staircase — also made of glass — that takes patrons to the 20,000-square-foot subterranean retail space.

According to reports, the cube was designed and paid for by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs. In fact, it's also been reported that Jobs demanded he be able to keep the structure at the end of the store's twenty-year lease (though he must replace it with a "comparable structure" before hauling it off).

The Fifth Avenue Apple Store elevator is now "out of order," according to tipsters who swung by location this holiday weekend.