Apple Stores Demonstrate That Retail Still Lives 416
WheezyJoe writes "Maybe OS X Leopard has its problems, but the New York Times seems to think Apple has designed the ideal techie retail store. A policy that encourages lingering, with dozens of fully functioning computers, iPods and iPhones for visitors to try, even for hours on end (one patron wrote a manuscript entirely at the store) has 'given some stores, especially those in urban neighborhoods, the feel of a community center ... Meanwhile, the Sony flagship store on West 56th Street, a few blocks from Apple's Fifth Avenue store, has the hush of a mausoleum. And being inside the long and narrow blue-toned Nokia store on 57th Street feels a bit like being inside an aquarium. The high-end Samsung Experience showroom, its nuevo tech music on full blast one recent morning, was nearly empty.'"
the samsung "store" doesn't sell anything (Score:5, Informative)
Frys Electronics (Score:5, Informative)
The people working there, because they want to... (Score:5, Informative)
The people working there weren't being particularly helpful, not their fault, there's not much you can do about a bad hard drive but replace it and I had a couple people ahead of me... and I was coming down with a cold, and feeling generally miserable, and really wanted to get my hard drive replaced and get home... but I was also wishing that I was feeling well enough to hang out there longer.
What was clear to me, but not apparently immediately clear to the young man, that the big difference between the people working at the Apple store and the people working at the other geek stores in the area is that they wanted to be working at the Apple store. The fact that they were working for Apple was what made all the difference to them, and that made all the difference to their customers. They wouldn't have been motivated selling Dells.
Now I'm not really a big fan of most of Apple's products... I really wish they'd unbundle so I didn't have to put up with a Mac so I could run OS X. But you can see the feedback going on, between the people who are into the whole Apple schtick, and the people who run the stores, and the style, and everything, and it all works together amazingly well. The reality distortion field lives in that feedback, too, and for an hour or so I was rather enjoying it.
Calling Business Week... (Score:5, Informative)
At the time, people didn't realize that the iPod was going to be so successful, but clearly the retail store was an important step for Apple. This opinion piece illustrates one of the problems of business experts who opine about a single step in a strategy, without having the vision to see how it fits into the whole. So Apple's gamble seems to have paid off. Here's to Apple sticking to a plan and seeing it through.
Not locked (Score:5, Informative)
Many I see are playing DVDs or maybe iTunes music. Once in a while Ive seen them with some FPS game. When I have seen Windows Desktops its either running 'just' the desktop, or one that has crashed to the desktop. Most of the times though I just see that fancy Aquarium screen saver.
Re:Who'da thunk it! (Score:4, Informative)
Are you joking? There is so much software for OS X, Apple would need thousands of computers just to have enough hard drive space to fit them all. They don't install everything, just a few of the more popular software packages, like MS Office.
No, they just need to install a few, common applications so they have something for users to try out.
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:1, Informative)
No it isn't. A run-on sentence is a sentence in which two or more independent clauses are joined without punctuation or conjunctions.[1] [wikipedia.org]
You might consider it a non sequitur... but then you'd also be wrong.
Re:You can smell the pomposity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who'da thunk it! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Calling Business Week... (Score:5, Informative)
The article doesn't give profit numbers, but each Apple store averages $4-5K per square foot revenues per year, which is 6x Neiman Marcus, 4x Best Buy and 1.5x of Tiffany's [seekingalpha.com].
Re:well, maybe (Score:2, Informative)
These people have never been to a Fry's. If you've never been to one, picture this: they sell porn and energy drinks within 20 feet of each other.
Obviously, you've never been to a Fry's, either. They have more than 50 feet of rechargeable batteries. The porn and the energy drinks, are, alas, some 170 yards apart in what appears to have once been an aircraft hangar for dirgibles.
I shop at Fry's, when I feel like walking an endurance walk-athon in order to get my $70 motherboard today rather than 3 days from now, at my doorstep. [pricewatch.com] And if porn is what gets you to go, perhaps you might consider some alternatives? [pornotube.com]
PS: I've never used pornotube. I googled "youtube clone porn" and it came up. Truthfully, I don't care about porn - I'm happily married and nothing a porn video portrays compares to the real thing from a willing partner. But if that's your gig...
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:1, Informative)
But the 802.11n version of the Airport Extreme seems to be getting consistently good reviews over other models, particularly in that many other 802.11n routers don't seem to have as useful or reliable a signal as the Apple router. Many of the other usually satisfactory brands seem to crap out on 802.11n in a way that the Apple does not. This is the first time I've considered buying the Apple router.
Re:Apple sure succeeds as contrarians (Score:3, Informative)
The second you say you like your Mac, people ask you if you are one of 'those people'. If you tell someone you are really happy with your new Toshiba laptop they think about it. If you say the same things about a Mac it must be because you are a fanatic.
As someone who got a mac for the hardware, it's unbelievably annoying.
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:3, Informative)
# Sleek design
# Easy setup, great user interface
# USB port for shared printer or hard drive
# 5.0GHz 802.11n-only mode offers superior performance
# Gigabit Ethernet support
# Price-to-performance ratio
Guessing from your sig and he fact that you're asking on
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You can smell the pomposity (Score:3, Informative)
It wasn't fixed 4 months ago when I finally threw up my hands, said "enough of this shit" and vowed to switch. It's great that it was finally fixed, but come on! OS 9 handled unreliable networks better. Windows 95 handled unreliable networks better! That's the kind of bug there's just no excuse for... there's some very basic QA failure happening at Apple right now.