Steve Jobs

want to do. “For example, I thought there should be a movie bay where we’d have various Macs and PowerBooks running iMovie and showing how you can import from your video camera and edit.”
    Johnson arrived at Jobs’s office early that Tuesday and told him about his sudden insight that they needed to reconfigure the stores. He had heard tales of his boss’s intemperate tongue, but he had not yet felt its lash—until now. Jobs erupted. “Do you know what a big change this is?” he yelled. “I’ve worked my ass off on this store for six months, and now you want to change everything!” Jobs suddenly got quiet. “I’m tired. I don’t know if I can design another store from scratch.”
    Johnson was speechless, and Jobs made sure he remained so. On the ride to the prototype store, where people had gathered for the Tuesday meeting, he told Johnson not to say a word, either to him or to the other members of the team. So the seven-minute drive proceeded in silence. When they arrived, Jobs had finished processing the information. “I knew Ron was right,” he recalled. So to Johnson’s surprise, Jobs opened the meeting by saying, “Ron thinks we’ve got it all wrong. He thinks it should be organized not around products but instead around what people do.” There was a pause, then Jobs continued. “And you know, he’s right.” He said they would redo the layout, even though it would likely delay the planned January rollout by three or four months. “We’ve only got one chance to get it right.”
    Jobs liked to tell the story—and he did so to his team that day—about how everything that he had done correctly had required a moment when he hit the rewind button. In each case he had to rework something that he discovered was not perfect. He talked about doing it on
Toy Story
, when the character of Woody had evolved into beinga jerk, and on a couple of occasions with the original Macintosh. “If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later,” he said. “That’s what other companies do.”
    When the revised prototype was finally completed in January 2001, Jobs allowed the board to see it for the first time. He explained the theories behind the design by sketching on a whiteboard; then he loaded board members into a van for the two-mile trip. When they saw what Jobs and Johnson had built, they unanimously approved going ahead. It would, the board agreed, take the relationship between retailing and brand image to a new level. It would also ensure that consumers did not see Apple computers as merely a commodity product like Dell or Compaq.
    Most outside experts disagreed. “Maybe it’s time Steve Jobs stopped thinking quite so differently,”
Business Week
wrote in a story headlined “Sorry Steve, Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work.” Apple’s former chief financial officer, Joseph Graziano, was quoted as saying, “Apple’s problem is it still believes the way to grow is serving caviar in a world that seems pretty content with cheese and crackers.” And the retail consultant David Goldstein declared, “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.”
    Wood, Stone, Steel, Glass
    On May 19, 2001, the first Apple store opened in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, with gleaming white counters, bleached wood floors, and a huge “Think Different” poster of John and Yoko in bed. The skeptics were wrong. Gateway stores had been averaging 250 visitors a week. By 2004 Apple stores were averaging 5,400 per week. That year the stores had $1.2 billion in revenue, setting a record in the retail industry for reaching the billion-dollar milestone. Sales in each store were tabulated every four minutes by Ellison’s software, giving instant information on how to integrate manufacturing, supply, and sales channels.
    As the stores flourished, Jobs stayed involved in every aspect. Lee Clow recalled, “In one of our marketing meetings just as the stores were opening, Steve made us spend a half hour deciding what hue ofgray the restroom signs should be.” The architectural firm of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson designed the signature stores, but Jobs made all of the major decisions.
    Jobs particularly focused on the staircases, which echoed the one he had built at NeXT. When he visited a store as it was being constructed, he invariably suggested changes to the staircase. His name is listed as the lead inventor on two patent