I think there has always been tremendous curiosity about Apple's products, especially in the early 2000s. The hardware looked interesting, and if you knew anyt

I think there has always been tremendous curiosity about Apple's products, especially in the early 2000s. The hardware looked interesting, and if you knew anything about the origins of OS X then the software looked very interesting too. But if you weren't already part of the club then it was hard to satisfy that curiosity, due the increasing scarcity of the hardware and the retail environment of the time. Apple Stores were designed to take advantage of this curiosity. Every town already had an authorized Apple dealer, and these stores were very nice, but they usually felt overwhelmingly exclusive rather than inclusive. If you were a curious outsider who simply wanted to play with this stuff it was a very awkward experience, and it always left me unsatisfied. The official Apple Stores solved this problem masterfully.