TysonsCorner
Latest
Nostalgia: Steve Jobs tours the first Apple Store at Macworld 2001 (video)
Since we'd rather not attempt to pick out a birthday present for the retail store that has everything, we're breaking out the home movies to see just how far it's come in the past decade. Here's some footage from Macworld 2001, in which a chipper Jobs takes us behind the wood barricade for a "little private tour" of the first ever Apple Store in Tysons Corner, VA, showing off a rear-projection screen for playing commercials and debuting the hyperbolically-named Genius Bar. All said, not that much seems to have changed with the stores in the past ten years, save, of course, for the inventory -- of particular note are the MP3 player and PDA sections, both populated with third-party hardware. Apple would scorch the earth of the music player market later that year with introduction of the iPod. The personal organizer still had a little time left, but surely even back then the iPhone was a twinkle in old Steve's eye.
The first Apple retail store has become a cult destination
A rather plain Apple retail store tucked away on the second floor of the over thirty-year-old Glendale Galleria mall in Calfornia has attained cult status by ostensibly being the first Apple store in existence. It opened on May 19, 2001 and was given the store designation number of 001. This is not news to a good number of Apple cognoscenti who regularly hang out at the store to soak in some of the historical Apple goodness, and others who make a pilgrimage to Glendale just for bragging rights. Some people have been known to come to the store just to take a picture as a memento. Apple employees have been known to transfer to the Glendale store because of its hallowed status, and some customers say that the level of expertise of the staff surpasses other Apple stores. Some think that the Glendale Galleria is a horribly run-down mall. This doesn't seem to bother those in the know who frequently stop by. It also doesn't bother Apple for that matter, since it's located close to several major Los Angeles freeways and brings in a good number of shoppers. As with most things Apple, this is not without controversy. Another Apple store in the much higher-end Tysons Corner Mall in McLean, VA, opened the same day (and several hours earlier), but sadly did not attain the designation of retail store 001, so it can't claim the number one spot. [Via Reuters]
