> an interactive luxury good

Apple hired Ahrendts in 2013 to head its retail efforts. She previously led Burberry, where she transformed the brand into a global luxury icon.

Before Ahrendts, Steve Jobs brought in Ron Johnson in 2000 to lead the retail revamp. Johnson, had experience at Target.

> When I was in high school, my friends and I had a game we used to play at the mall: we would go into the Apple store and try to make it to the back wall of the store, touch it, and exit out the front without an Apple staff person talking to us.

Idk if this is about age or sex or location but in Apple Stores in Asia I play another fun game: just stand and wait until anybody talks to me. Could take 20+ minutes no problems. I play on my phone or I try to stare down staff but they chat among themselves and make sure to not accidentally look.

If the store has only one entrance and there is unoccupied staff, they sometimes assault me with questions when I enter. But even in those stores as soon as I browsed and made a choice and ready to buy they vanish magically!

We used to play this same game at the Disney store, back in the 90’s

My first Mac was before the Apple Store. Got it at a CompUSA Apple department. Still a magical experience to see a bunch of Macs gathered together in the same place.

It's wild how a dumb little gadget from Walmart could quietly steer your whole trajectory, while the shiny luxury item just left a more photogenic memory

My favorite thing to do at Apple stores as a teen was jailbreak display phones and setup reverse ssh tunnels on them, for reasons.

Best mp3 player I ever had was the SanDisk sansa clip. Just loaded music off an ad card and weight almost nothing. Worked great.

I can imagine that sprinting out of an Apple store in the US would work out better for some people than others...

We had the same game in high school, except for a clothing retailer. The Apple Store didn’t exist yet.

The more redneck version of this I did as a kid was capture the flag in Walmart