A waiting line of several hundred people , snaking around the block , greetedApple ’s raw computer storage in Palo Alto , Calif. , on Saturday morn .
Clapping and cheering , now a common sight at Apple store openings , greet the first customers through the door at 10 a.m.
The shop , which was literally under wraps until Saturday ’s opening move , has an all - deoxyephedrine frontal and roof and micturate a bold assertion on Palo Alto ’s leafy University Avenue . It replace a store a few minutes away that opened in 2001 as one of Apple ’s first retail outlet .
First in line was Fitzgerald Geonzon , who start queue at 7 p.m. on Friday eventide .
“ It ’s beautiful , it ’s vast , it ’s stunning , ” he said .
Geonzon , from neighboring Menlo Park , said he ’s been go to Apple ’s previous shop in Palo Alto for at least six years and is look forward to frequent the new one .
“ I mean I ’m going to like it a lot , ” he said .
A customer show a tee - shirt given away at Apple ’s new store in Palo Alto on opening day .
Apple volunteer a free thyroxin - shirt to the first 1,000 people through the door on Saturday , but many of those in furrow likely did n’t want the shirt to cajole them from their plate . Palo Alto is the middle of Apple territory , its computing machine often outnumber Windows machines at the metropolis ’s chocolate shops , and many locals have been using the company ’s computers for age .
Typical of those was the second in melodic line , a piece who only gave his first name , Lawrence . He used to learn drums at a medicine store that occupied the space before Apple moved in . Since 2001 , he ’s been a regular at the Apple store .
“ I live in town , I take the air downtown on a daily basis , so I ’ve been in that storage since it ’s been open . I would wander in there on a day-after-day basis . It become a home away from home for me . ”
The company ’s iPhones and iPads dominate the right - hired man side of the new storage as visitors enter and laptop data processor sit around on the left . A little further back are the desktop personal computer and the rest of Apple ’s line - up . Accessories hang on some of the wall .
Locals and visitors likewise will find the fresh store more spacious than the previous building and much brighter thanks to the all - glass roof . New at the Palo Alto store , although not new to Apple retail , is a wider Genius Bar where Apple staff sit on the same side of the table as the client .
Apple is a much dissimilar company from when the original memory board opened in 2001 . It was in 2001 that the iPod found to supplement a ware pedigree dominated by computers . The iPhone , Apple ’s most democratic product today , did n’t live and tablet figurer were something of an rarity that Microsoft was continually endeavor to get correct .
The change in Apple ’s business that has pushed earphone and pill to the forefront has had a substantial effect on its bottom line .
In 2001 , Apple reported a last passing of $ 25 million on cut-rate sale of $ 5.3 billion . In 2011 , the company bring forth a net net of $ 26 billion as sales climbed to $ 108 billion .
In itsmost late quarter , Apple report revenue of $ 36 billion . Retail stock account for $ 4.2 billion of those sales .
Updated at 9:25 a.m. PT to correct the amount of Apple ’s fourth - quarter tax revenue .
