A new report from investment bank Piper Jaffray (which loves to talk Apple) claims that after spending 6 hours over this busy shopping weekend at malls, they noticed something: Apple Stores draw in people. To be almost comically precise, they say that 27% of people walking within 25-feet of an Apple store entrance wound up entering the store (does that remind anyone else of “60% of the time, it works everytime”?).

While this “gravitational pull” of Apple stores may sound interesting, I think anyone who has been to a mall within the past two years could have told you the same exact data without creepily counting people go into stores. I’m not sure I’ve been in an Apple store the past few years without it being jam-packed with people – many times annoyingly so. Compare this with say, the Sunglass Hut, where I never see anyone in.

People, even if they’re not ready to buy anything just yet, are getting more and more interested about Apple – studies like this are simply a numerical way to justify maintaining a $250-a-share target price for the stock. The next study I want to see from Piper Jaffray would be once those customers are pulled in, can they escape without moving faster than the speed of light?