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The kids’ section in an Apple store is very popular, the Apple people said. They stressed that Apple wants to be "part of your digital lifestyle," putting the computer at the center of family life. View Slideshow 
PALO ALTO, California -- Just outside Stanford University, there's a mile-long stretch of University Avenue that is the epitome of yuppie chic. There are luxury furniture shops that sell "old-fashioned" footstools for a few weeks' pay. A cosmopolitan range of restaurants dots the sidewalks, from Indian to Japanese to German, and there's a new Italian place owned by Francis Ford Coppola.
And everywhere one looks, there are silver cars, a lot of them Audis.
It's no wonder, then, that this is the spot where, this Saturday, Apple will open its first Northern California retail store. The Apple idiom -- consisting of a minimalist palette of silver, black and white, with an emphasis on beauty -- fits snugly here. You wouldn't need to do much market research to see that a lot of the people walking around here at least identify with Apple's "brand," even if they don't own a Macintosh.
This new store -- which was shown to the media on Thursday -- is the ninth of the 25 stores Apple plans to open this year, but Ron Johnson, an Apple retail exec, said this is "kind of our hometown store." It's the one closest to Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, but perhaps more importantly, it's closest to Steve Jobs' house.
"Steve has taken a very active role in our retail strategy," Johnson said of Apple's CEO. "So I would expect that Steve would be here a lot."
This new Apple store is virtually identical to all the other stores, Johnson said. This is Apple's first street-front store -- the others have been in shopping malls -- but inside, the layout's the same. The interior is spare and the design clean, like an upscale clothing boutique for computers.
The pretty computers sit delicately on curvy shelves, each machine surrounded by gadgets -- digital cameras, PDAs, MP3 players. Obviously, a lot of work has gone into the design of this space, but as pretty as things are, the Apple people here stressed that this was not a museum. It's more like a playground, they say.
"(Our goal) is to get the 95 percent of people who don't use Macs to get to know the Mac," Johnson said. It's unclear how well that's working, however, as the company will only say that the stores so far are doing "well," and that it's "on-track" to open 25 stores this year.
Johnson said Apple is extensively tracking the stores' traffic to see who is coming in, who's buying and whether non-Mac people are really being converted. But that's "not data that we're sharing with anyone."
"We're confident that our market share will grow dramatically," he said.
There's no doubt that these stores are popular. The previous Apple openings have been zoo-like, with thousands lining up starting at dawn to get into the store. Given its location, this shop might be even more popular.
Maybe even the boss will be there.
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