A new book co-written by the original head of Apple retail reveals much about how and most importantly why Apple Stores started, though the telling suffers from being its authors' first work.
Apple is nearing the end of a five-year plan to open or remodel around 50 Apple Stores worldwide. That's around 10% of the total number of Apple Stores, and Apple's retail business has been an extraordinary success for a quarter of a century.
Shop Different review: what's in the book
Now retailer Ron Johnson has co-written a book describing how he was approached by Steve Jobs to create the stores. "Shop Different" by him and Zander Nethercutt, explains the impetus for the stores and the effort that went into creating them.
Aside from the result being bricks and mortar stores, the tale is the same as every other product Apple was making at the time. Steve Jobs is deeply involved with every inch of the development, for instance, and the stores were a costly investment at a time when Apple was far from the wealthy firm it is today.
That makes this story fascinating, that Apple gambled on spending big. Johnson, though, paints it not as a wild gamble, but instead as an absolutely necessary move if Apple were to survive.
Johnson is a self-professed retailer with his entire career in that business, and even today maintaining that physical stores are actually flourishing. Back then, though, there was no mistaking that Apple needed to do something.
Despite the huge success of the iMac, Apple still faced the problems that its products were being sold through stores such as Best Buy. It was in retailers were it fought to get shelf space, and it did not have store owners motivated to push it.
When a store's chief focus is on price, Apple loses because the upfront cost of a Mac is so much more than a PC. Once someone uses both machines, the value of the Mac becomes so much clearer, but few people were getting to use it.
Whereas with an Apple Store, the company could encourage people to try out its products. As Johnson describes it, the reasoning seems obvious and yet at the time, Apple was ridiculed for opening stores.
There was reason for that, though, including how at the time Apple had only four main hardware products. Rather than wondering how to fill shelf space with so few items, Johnson and Jobs designed the stores so that selling took second place to using.
The stores were designed to be destinations rather than hard-sell retail outlets, like CompUSA or other Apple vendors of the day. The stores were designed to include free advice from the now famous Genius Bars, which at the time was typically paid-for at Apple Specialist locations.
Children playing on iMacs on the first day that the first two Apple Stores opened. This was Tysons Corner in 2001, so those kids are now approaching 30 years old.
No question, it is a tremendous tale that also happens to be set at a time when Jobs was firmly back in place at Apple and the company had risen from ashes.
Shop Different review: Needed more
All of this is in the book, alongside much more about the key decisions, and the particular problems that faced the stores. There's a sense, though, that this is the first book from either Johnson or his co-writer Nethercutt.
The latter has a great deal of experience writing online, yet somehow the book feels a little too cautious. There are anecdotes and Steve Jobs doesn't escape at least implied criticism, but there is more to tell.
For example, the book doesn't even mention how Microsoft tried copying Apple Stores, and even Gateway tried some renovations to stop the juggernaut. Microsoft's ultimately failed retail experiment began in 2009, shortly before Johnson left Apple in 2011. Gateway had retail stores before Apple Stores, but they ignominiously died quickly too.
Johnson also doesn't mention his successor, the short-lived retail head John Browett, nor any of the work subsequently done on the stores by Angela Ahrendts. This was surely a conscious decision, but Johnson is very good at establishing his retail acumen and it would've been fascinating to read his analysis of all that's happened since.
In person, Johnson is likeable and very knowledgeable about retail. That does come through in the book, but perhaps most in its quite short closing sections about his move from Apple to JC Penney.
He's frank about what he describes as his mistakes at that department store, but also what a gigantically different environment it was from Apple. That leads to a section on the need for kindness in business, which feels out of place.
That tone of that section makes the book conclude feeling more like a general business title.
Shop Different review: Should you buy
This is really an exceptional period in both Apple and retail history, and there is simply no one better placed to write about it than Johnson. You'll finish it wanting more, but perhaps that's a measure just how interesting a topic this is.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Pros
- True insider's view of a key Apple moment
- Retailer's perspective instead of a technologist's
- Explains why Apple took this huge gamble
Cons
- No insight into why copycat stores failed
- General business audience, versus an Apple history one
- No analysis of Apple Stores since Johnson left
"Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius" by Ron Johnson with Zander Nethercutt is published by Harper Business. Retailing at $45 in hardback, it's available on Amazon from September 22, 2026, for $32.
