zing!

(I bet the failed cybercafe concept morphed into the apple store concept)

I don't think it did, Matt -- the cybercafes were out of the picture by the end of that same year. The Apple Stores didn't appear for another 3+ years.

Another venture at the time shows just how off-base Apple was in thinking its future was bricks-and-mortar: the Apple Publishing Technology Centers, pre-press stores offering high-end printing capability along with a mix of consulting and system integration. The idea was a hybrid of showing off Apple's publishing technology, and selling the actual printing services. Most of them were in Asia -- India and China especially. They were offering a commodity service which watered down their brand and faced an eventual squeeze from improvements in printing technology, while cannibalizing a key evangelizer market for Mac DTP. Oddly, the Publishing Centers were not, initially, internet-enabled (my source was intimately involved and explained to me that they just didn't think their customers would expect it). This venture, too, met an early death, though not so quickly as the cybercafes.