 Friday,
October 5, 2001
Ron Johnson, Senior
VP of Retail at Apple, warms up the press corp before embarking
on the store tour. Ron was originally with Target stores.
He has been at Apple for about a year and a half and is responsible
for overall execution and strategy for the retail stores.
Apple brought out the big guns for the opening of this store,
but it also helps that Ron lives only a few blocks from this
location. Ron also went to Stanford University which is about
2 miles due west from the store location.
Steve Jobs also lives within a mile or so of the Palo Alto
store location and the store is about
14 miles from Apple's Cupertino headquarters.
Between 15 and 25 journalist attending the press briefing,
including reporters from local news stations, CNET and Wired
Magazine.
Click on picture for larger image
 Running
down the center of the store are shelves upon shelves of software
that will run on the Macintosh. Ron took special care to emphasize
how many titles there were, to the gathered technology reporters.
One of the great myths, that is almost always included in
stories about Apple, is that there is hardly any software
for the platform. The Apple Stores aim to refute this belief
with the prominent display of all these titles.
At the very back of the store is a little theater area. It
is here that Apple plans to run rotating product demos and
tutorials, on a regular basis. As you can see the store layout
is almost Zen-like in its simplicity and lack of clutter.
Click on picture for larger image
 The
Apple Stores are divided up in sections. Here we are looking
at the Digital Music section. In the upper right hand corner
are MP3 music players.
Further down is the section for children. There are about
4 or 5 iMacs loaded with low-key games. Parents can plop their
kids down here while they go off to look at the high tech
items.
Other sections of the store include ones for digital photography
and video among others. Most of the store is dedicated to
Apple's new push as the leader of what they say will be the
next growth area for technology - the computer as the digital
hub.
Click on picture for larger image
For further, more extensive coverage, and additional pictures
of the Palo Alto Apple Store, visit the following pages:
Apple Resources
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