It was The Byte Shop, the first Apple store that exclusively sold the Apple I for $666 and was born as a pornographic video store.

There is a common maxim when we talk about Apple: the Apple Store They are among the most profitable points of sale per square meter on the planet.. But Apple stores, before being temples, museums and centers of congregation for the most fanatical, were simple electronics corners, bare boards and boxes full of fuses and other spare parts.

The story of the first Apple Store is even more curious and has a key player, Paul Terrell – and speaking of actors, in the biopic “Jobs”, Terrell was played by the late Brad William Henke. Thanks to this man, his business acumen and his expansive vision, Apple has transformed into a small giant in a few months. They owe him, at the very least, the recognition of having reached their first commercial milestones.

The first Apple Store before the first Apple Store

Paul was a restless man and full of ideas, he only lacked one thing: money, a lot of money to make his ideas come true. And Paul had done things well with RadioShack. An exclusive agreement allowed it to sell the Altair 8800 from Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). We are talking about a team that inspired an entire generation. However, When MITS learned that Terrell was stocking other competing products, it withdrew its franchise.which meant losing a steady stream of profits and having to find a replacement.

A few weeks passed and, in the meantime, Steve Wozniak wanted to unveil plans for his first Apple I in order to simplify the production of the brand’s first computer. But Steve Jobs disagreed. As luck would have it, one day the stars aligned: in the same exclusive club where Steve Jobs and Marty Spergel met. There was also a certain Paul Terrell.

At this event, held monthly at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Palo Alto, Steve Jobs gave his first demonstration of the Apple I with the usual accent. This piqued Paul Terrell’s curiosity. When he finished, Paul and Jobs introduced themselves, shook hands and promised to continue talking. Steve, in fact, couldn’t wait. The next day, wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt and completely barefoot, The Apple founder contacted Paul Terrell and asked how interested he was in the Apple I..

And he really was: he offered to buy 50 computers for $500 each, cash on delivery, with shipping costs on his own. There was only one problem: Terrell wanted the computers fully assembled. We’re talking about a payment of $25,000 in cashchild’s play for 1975. The fact that Apple achieved this deserves another article.

Fishing Paul Terrell no haycone

This bet was actually the guarantor that allowed Steve Jobs to purchase all the components he needed. When Cramer Electronics asked him how he would pay for spare parts for 100 units, Steve Jobs’ response was literally this: “I have this purchase order from the computer store chain Byte Shop for fifty computers and the terms of payment is cash on delivery. you give me the coins, I will be able to build and deliver the computers within a monthcollect my money from Terrell and pay you.

Terrell invested his savings in a store worthy of his ambition and the first Byte Shop was opened at 1063 El Camino Real West in Mountain View, California on December 8, 1975. It was officially the world’s first computer retail chain and Apple’s first major customer.

The funny thing is that before being a computer store and placing its two large signs on the right and left, it was nothing other than a video store filled with porn films on VHS. Around 500 references, no less. The video store changed ownership for an amount that was never disclosed.

And a few months later, the computers went on sale for $666.66. Nothing satanic, let no one lay a hand on your head; It was a number that amused both Terrell and Wozniak, who loved sequences of repeated numbers. If we do the calculation, today we obtain almost 4,000 dollars, past inflation. You can already imagine the small profit that remains. As it was, On April 11, 1976, the first Apple computer became a reality in the window of The Byte Shopthe only one in the world to have units available.

Yes OK The first unit was used for a high school, for mathematics lessonsDuring these months, another 100 units were produced. Of the 199 created, all were sold in less than a year, except for 25 of them which had some type of defect in their production. But in fact, the computer stopped being sold a year later, and by September 1977 it no longer had official support, in favor of the Apple II launched in July 1977.

With the profits, Paul expanded his brand and soon opened Byte Shops in Santa Clara, San Jose, Palo Alto and Portland, Oregon. At the time, Terrell could be considered one of the four largest retailers in the United States. But Terrell quickly changed his model and sold his chain of stores in 1977. With 58 active stores, John Peers of Logical Machine Corporation took over the company and our friend founded ComputerMania Inc, another computer rental chain. Because now the money was in the services, let them tell the App Store.

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