A few month later when OS X rolled out (March 2001), Steve spoke to a gathering of Apple employees in Cafe Mac. A lot less gray hair and a lot more of him. That almost looks like a bit of a gut hanging out.

Five year ago, some people thought Steve Jobs was crazy to open Apple-branded retail stores. I’m sure those people are ‘thinking different’ today. As usual, Apple’s managed to create a media frenzy over its snazzy new store in New York, and looking at the photos, it’s easy to get caught up in it even from here.

I figured the stores would work out well. The existing Apple resellers (especially in the US) were not doing the best job of reaching non-Mac users. If you found Macs at all, they were being ‘explained’ by the same 18 year old kid who was selling car stereos and washing machines two aisles over. Who better than Apple to tell the Apple story to the uninitiated? Besides, if Windows users had a chance to actually see and touch a Mac, they are much more likely to ultimately buy one.

The Minnesota Connection
But there was another reason I knew the stores would succeed…the guy who Steve chose to run them: Ron Johnson. Ron came from Target, where he helped them achieve their incredible success. It was obvious to me that Apple was serious about the stores if they they put someone like this in charge.

I met Ron shortly after he joined Apple and was surprised to learn we had two things in common: we were both from Minnesota, and we both commuted between Minnesota and Cupertino. (Most people don’t know it, but Minnesota is something of a retailing Mecca. The first enclosed shopping malls were here, the largest mall is here, and Target and Best Buy both started here and have their headquarters here.)

Product Manager Heaven
Until the first Apple store opened, the only places where you could find copies of my products, like DVD Studio Pro was online. Maybe, if you lived in New York or LA, you could find a very specialized dealer somewhere with one copy in stock, but otherwise you’d have to go to one of the mail order places. So imagine my delight when I made my first visit to an Apple store (the one in Beverly Center in Los Angeles) and encountered this…

DVD Studio Pro, in stock at the first Apple store!

I know…it’s a sight only a product manager could love. But it was a thrill for me.

Much has changed with the layout of the Apple stores since then, but they still stock all the good stuff that you just can’t get at other stores. Almost 150 stores later, it’s nice to know that if I’m in Manhattan and need a copy of Final Cut Studio at three in the morning, Apple will be there to help me.

While in China I spent a day in the ciy of Anji, known as the City of Bamboo; not without reason. Bamboo was growing all over the surrounding hillsides, and everywhere you looked were immense piles of bamboo being dried, stacked, cut, sorted and trucked to the many factories, large and small, turning the bamboo into wonderful and useful products. Pillows, purses, placemats, chairs, chopsticks, hats, shoes, edible bamboo, and even bamboo beer (which was pretty good.) Everything bamboo.

Unfortunately, no panda sightings.

Bamboo is remarkable for its renewability; the samples shown here are only about a year old, and nearly ready to be harvested.

Getting Down to Business
My work took me to a factory making bamboo flooring, where I saw the entire process of turning the bamboo ‘logs’ into beautiful hardwood floors, ready for shipment around the world.

A careful eye selects the logs to begin the process.

The finished product

In the Anji market, it’s bamboo everywhere.

Everything in this shop (and numerous others) was made of bamboo…except the young lady

Popular bamboo mats

The bottom end of the large bamboo plants are carved into incredible figures.

Steve looks a little distracted, but really he is just concentrating on the monitor in the front row of the auditorium which shows his next slide.

*National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Chicago – June 2001.

This awesome building was in the same area; it houses Fuji Television.

I was fortunate enough to be able to visit several times, and work out of one of the spare offices. Since I was based in the US, most of my work for Astarte was done remotely, so it was a special treat to be able to be face-to-face with all the people I’d come to know via telephone and e-mail.

But the best thing about my visits to Karlsruhe was that I learned to appreciate good coffee, thanks to the Jura espresso machine that sat next to Freddie’s office. I had never seen or tasted anything like it before. (I’ve since gotten one of my own.)

*At least from an American perspective, where we tend to tear down anything that’s older than 30 years and build a strip mall.

After getting the main computer configured the way Steve wanted it, we’d use target disk mode to clone the whole thing to the backup computer. The two computers were connected to a single monitor through a KVM switch, then tucked inside the pedestal where they are powered by an uninteruptible power supply, of course. (the second monitor shown here was just for setup.)

I miss the old logo.