Apple Store

This is the Chicago Apple Store on Michigan Avenue a couple of days after Steve Jobs died. The post-it notes on the outside windows are notes to him.

Apple computers weren’t always so easy to find.  When I first bought my own Mac in my first year of college in 1989, I’d already been using Apple computers for years.  Compact with a tiny 9 inch black and white screen, it cost more than an iMac does now, didn’t come with a hard drive, but was miles beyond the Apple II and Apple IIGS I had previously.  Four years later, I graduated with a Powerbook 160, with a speed of 25 mhz, a 40 MB hard drive, and a greyscale screen, all of which worked beautifully until 2001.  (My Powerbook now lives in a plastic bin, thick and heavy, waiting to be restored.)  But even when I got an iMac G3 in 2001, I could only buy it mail-order (I know I’m linking to a website, but it used to come in the mail!), or from random computer stores which were authorized Apple dealers.

The Apple Store is kind of a miracle.  All the streamlined new computers out on tables to try, the Genius Bar, the kids walking around with their super-charged credit-card-ready iPhones ready to sell, sell, and sell, softly.  And the people browsing, strolling in and out, wandering.  (It’s not all heavenly–my sister-in-law’s boyfriend was recently accosted and harassed by an off-duty Chicago cop while dropping off his computer to be fixed.  Guess what race he isn’t.)  Apple took its amazing products and built a pretty terrific shopping experience around them (and I do not like shopping for anything).  The store is even more amazing than the website (and how many stores can you say that about?).

Anyway.  This was just supposed to be about my photograph.  I really didn’t mean to gush like that.  Man.