Behind a giant like Apple, there is certainly a lot of ideas and projects that have not (yet) been realized. Among them is also the idea of a chain of Cybercafes, which was supposed to start in 1996.
First Apple stores opened in 2001 in Virginia and California. To date, the network has expanded to more than 400 stores worldwide. Even before that, in 1996, Apple announced that it was starting to build cybercafes. "The time is right. Internet cafes are a trend. Technology is finally reaching the masses. There is room to show our products to the real world,” so said former Apple marketing president Satjiv Chahil in 1995 when Apple announced a network of Internet cafes. These were intended for London, Paris, New York, Tokyo and Sydney. Apple's cafes are supposed to provide visitors with fast internet browsing, playing games or creating websites, all while enjoying good coffee and food. In addition, the cafes would sell consumer products with the Apple logo. Each table would allow visitors to surf the web, order food and drinks, they had the idea that Apple's cafes would be a meeting point for video conferences, they also planned VIP rooms. The whole thing was designed as a kind of web Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood.
It is not entirely clear what happened so that the project, which had already taken on a visual form on paper, was not realized. In 1997, Apple announced that it would not do the project and put the blame on its partners. But the partners hit back, saying that they would be happy to take the project forward. Anyway, the idea was shelved for five years, but then Apple started creating a story in new dimensions and Internet cafes were just a distant memory.
