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Apple Stores Demonstrate That Retail Still Lives
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.'"
Seriously, that is a lame run-on. If you can't think of a good one to put in the summary, don't.
the New York Times seems to think Apple has designed the ideal techie retail store.
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.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Just plain retail. Selling stuff which is not worth hacking.
My local Big W store, on the other hand, has these self service checkouts. You scan the products yourself and put them on some kind of weight verification thing, then spend five or 10 minutes doing a credit card transaction. While my wife was trying to get that to work I took a look at another terminal where the POS application had apparently crashed, leaving an interesting windows desktop with a working touch screen mouse. The staff didn't appreciate my attempted repair though, in fact there were so many people keeping an eye on that broken terminal they could have run a whole line of manual checkouts.
Anyway if a real apple store opens here in Melbourne I might take a look but I can't see myself buying anything there.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I swear to god, it is a store that sells nothing. Its, instead, a showcase of the current samsung products available at any store that sells electronics in New York City. I went there once trying to buy a wireless adaptor for my sasmung DVD receiver, and I couldn't buy it there. Why would i waste my time going there?
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
We shopped that store in September. I remember checking out some yoyodyne pen gadget which saved the writing electronically via magic paper.
Other than being priced outside of the impulse shopping range, it had the usual Nokia coolness.
The point of the article is well taken, though; cel phones don't do much to engender community.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"...given some stores, especially those in urban neighborhoods, the feel of a community center ..."
It's true. It's a great place to hang out. I know lots of guys that met their boyfriends at the Apple 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
Wait, you mean that a store that lets people freely do whatever they wish to do with little restrictions is more successful than a store in which you can just buy and leave? Who'da thunked it!
You just got troll'd!
If I were going to buy a computer, the first thing I would do once I got it is open it up and see what I could improve down the road. This is probably why I've never been inside an Apple store. I think the NYT is using the word techie the same way they'd use the word "foodie." Foodies aren't cooks, don't necessarily know anything about cooking, but they do know what they like. And they'll tell you why.
I think the appeal of Apple computers is different (but related) to the appeal of the computers themselves.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
When I can get the same Wacom tablet for $40 less at Office Depot, it isn't ideal for anyone but Steve Jobs and people who, if Apple charged for the service, would already spend $40 to use the Genius Bar to learn how to plug a USB device into a USB port. Notably, the actual article never says Apple Stores are ideal for techies --actually, it's pretty specific in how it caters to people who need their hands held every step of the way. Those markups are service charges, money shoppers spend for good, in-person customer service. People with any sense of doing things themselves will never go for that, and I'd toss most techies into that group. That said, like most everything else Apple, the stores execute many things so well that, even though they only make a miniscule-to-medium dent on the actual marketplace, others will imitate them mercilessly. I can't wait to see wireless checkouts everywhere, and the open-access model to their hardware makes so much sense. (That's particularly well described on TFA's second page, where a writer who couldn't afford a computer wrote a 300-page manuscript on Apple Store computers and was accommodated by the staff.) Still, shoot me if you catch me buying something there at their markups of non-Apple products. Theirs are the worst I've ever seen retail, and that's saying a lot.
You don't like to go in because you feel like you don't belong? Unless your apple store is very different than the one local to me, that's all in your head. Same with the lingerie department. Once you get over that feeling, you'll find that 1) the people in the apple store are just regular people, and 2) Once you get comfortable with lingerie, you can buy something your significant other will wear (insert oblig. this is /. joke) that you find really attractive too.
That all said, I still get uncomfortable in a place like Louis Vutton. I feel like they instinctively know I don't have as much money as I feel like I am supposed to have, and will treat me accordingly. But that's all in my head.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
That's why I bought my iPhone from an AT&T Wireless store rather than going to the local Apple store. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible. I didn't want to deal with stuck-up attitudes and the feigned shock of using my iPhone on *gasp!* Windows. I didn't need a pile of accessories, lessons on how to use the phone, or a MacBook to go along with it. I wanted the phone and nothing more, so I bought it from a phone store. Easy, simple, and no dealing with "better than thou" attitudes.
to me, it's like walking into a very feminine beauty parlor, or a lingerie department as a man. It's very alien and uncomfortable
That's not a bug, it's a feature. They know their target demographic.
And it works for them. The store at the Mall of America in Bloomington is quite possibly the busiest square footage in the entire mall...and that includes Hooters. I think they do a remarkable job with the stores. Almost every other big company has horrible stores. Dell has stupid kiosks in malls. Can you imagine how bad a Microsoft store would be? Disclosure: I do not own any Apple products. I run on Dell hardware.
Apple stores win because of the "Genius Bar."
Yes, the crowds suck. Yes, the stores just scream "rip-off margins." Yes, "genius bar" is a stupid name.
Still, the ability to schlep a system in and have the problem worked in most cases while-u-wait is what gets people into those stores. (Try that with a Dell or an HP sometime. Whoops! Hope you like shipping things. And for a real laugh, try bringing a sony product into a 'Sony Style' store for a support or repair issue.)
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
I think every post with the word fanboi (except this one) should be automatically deleted.
Should be "Maybe WheezyJoe has been smoking crack..."
Arrogance?! Have you ever had to work with someone who has a computer and they are unsure of something, and when you fix it or walk them through it they say, "Oh, you must be a genius for knowing this!" It's not Apple being pompousness--it's them catering to those who want to know that they people there will be able to fix their stuff! It's their traffic sign on the highway that is getting their shit fixed. Could they have picked a better name? Perhaps. But I challenge you to figure out one with the same degree of confidence that also doesn't sound like complete shit.
Just b/c you may find the experience uncomfortable doesn't mean everyone else does. Any apple store I've been to has always been crowded (I've gone to the ones in NYC and some in NJ). Compared to other stores, I found the employees to be helpful since they like macs so much and while the genius bar isn't full of geniuses, they really try their best to help you out as much as they can. As for most people buying imacs or macbooks these days, there aren't joining a cult, they either are sick of windows or just want the latest "in" laptop. They will use email, internet, and ms word or excel and not have to worry about installing anti-virus or anti-spyware software and have a system which is secure.
Exactly. It is all in his head. His post actually says more about his own hang-ups and insecurities than it does the mythical cult he describes.
In my experience Frys is bar none the best techie store I have ever been in. I have never been somewhere with as wide a selection. They carry apple products and a ton of other stuff too. I don't know how big the largest apple store is but you could probably drop it into the average frys.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
it's a company store. You can buy anything you want, so long as it works with something made by Apple.
HP, Dell, and others might be able to do the same thing, provided they had panache in their product lines.
Still, you can't buy Linux, you can't buy a game machine, you can't buy anything else. It's a controlled environment and a carefully calculated 'user experience'. Would we expect anything else from Apple? After all, Apple gets what Apple wants...
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
i've had many interactions with both the so-called "geniuses" at the apple genius bar as well as geek squad "geeks" (i've been privy to about a half-dozen interactions with each group over the past year or so). the apple "geniuses" were extremely well-versed, polite, and cheerful. in every situation where solving the problem didn't involve completely gutting the machine, the problems were diagnosed in a matter of minutes, they showed me a trick or two about os x that i wasn't aware of, and i was out the door in ten minutes or less, feeling good about the whole experience.
geek squad repeatedly erased all my data (even when explicitly instructed not to), and installed the same buggy, problematic software on it again, ensuring that i'd have need of their services in the future. at no point did they ever bother trying to figure out what was wrong; the solution would invariably be to reformat and reinstall. on more than one occasion, i caught them going through (opening and examining) my files, and copying my music. i've actually watched them (unintentionally) install viruses, simply because they're utterly incompetent.
fanbois in general are to be disliked, but the stores don't reek of arrogance- to the contrary, their startling success (especially with people who are openly computer illiterate) is quite telling. i think you're just insecure because you apparently take issue with the fact that some of the employees look a bit scruffy....which isn't even remotely relevant. grow up.
I went to the Apple store to buy one for my wife. I do not know about your particular store, but when I went they had an "express lane" for people who simply wanted to buy an iPhone or an iPod. I think it took less than 5 minutes. They did not try and sell me anything else, nor did they even ask what I would be using for an OS. In fact the cashier was quite a pleasant person. In fact, I have always found the employees at all of the Apple stores I've patronized to be uniformly courteous and helpful.
But to me, it's like walking into a very feminine beauty parlor, or a lingerie department as a man. It's very alien and uncomfortable
Dear Sir,
I wish to complain on the stronglest possible terms about the previous entry about aliens wearing womens' clothes. Some of my best friends are aliens, and only a FEW of them are transvestites.
Yours faithfully,
Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong, Mrs.
P.S. Lingerie is actually VERY comfortable.
You're obviously not in the right target demographics for them.
Now if you were gay or a chick or a teenager trying to be hip, that would be a different story.
I once went into one wearing my grubby leathers because I rode the bike that day, and I felt a little out of place too. Not that I'd buy a Mac or iPod anyway...
thegodmovie.com - watch it
You don't like to go in because you feel like you don't belong? Unless your apple store is very different than the one local to me, that's all in your head. Same with the lingerie department.
Not just that I don't belong, but that I feel like I shouldn't *have* to belong to something. It's just a tool, like a hammer. If you don't like the lingerie analogy, then imagine walking into a Christian fundamentalist church as an atheist.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Isobella Jade was down on her luck, living on a friend's couch and struggling to make it as a fashion model when she had the idea of writing a book...
Ms. Jade spent hours at a stretch standing in a discreet corner of the store, typing. Within a few months, she had written nearly 300 pages.
Hmmm, I wonder how many guys struggling to make it as say, I dunno... a farmer, they let use their computers everyday for months?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some idea balls to remove from a manatee tank.
I can certainly see how Apple's model is effective. I remember going down to visit relatives over the holidays and having my aunt insist that we visit the store just because it was such a fun place to go to. Apparently she also always visits when she's shopping around the area (it's located with a lot of other stores in a strip-mall type setup). If Apple stores have such an inviting atmosphere that people will go there even if they don't need anything (but may end up being talked into something anyway), I can see how Apple makes a lot of new customers that they wouldn't normally have.
Reality is the original Rorschach.
Can you smell the smug wafting out of an Apple store like you can smell the nerd wafting out of the video game store?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Obviously he is, else he wouldn't be so disturbed by it.
i think you're just insecure because you apparently take issue with the fact that some of the employees look a bit scruffy....which isn't even remotely relevant. grow up.
The issue isn't the scruffiness itself, it's the *motivation* behind the scruffiness. It's an affectation -- same as the reason most people get tattoos or piercings, it's to convince others that they have some sort of style by copying the style of others. What irritates me is the shallowness, it's all about style over substance -- same as Apple. A person of substance doesn't need all that nonsense, the substance will speak for itself. Same as Apple.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Yes, "Genius Bar" is a stupid name. We all agree on that.
But I brought in a malfunctioning iBook 14" to the Apple Store.
1) They looked up the service history, saw it'd been brought in before (once for the same problem, once because I tripped with the ethernet cord plugged in and broke the port).
2) Instantly declared the computer a lemon before the lemon clause of the warranty was involved.
3) Instantly told me they're replace the iBook at no charge.
4) (Here's the part that sets them above every other computer makers, and most retailers) Walked into the back of the store, brought out a brand new 14" iBook with a faster processor and more RAM than mine had, and gave it to me.
5) Then he noticed that the one from the back didn't have a wireless card, so he pulled it from my older iBook, put it in the new one, and verified it all worked before giving it to me.
Boom. Done. Instant new laptop, no charge. Sadly, I'm no longer an Apple customer, but their retail/service experience is beyond compare. Imagine getting that level of service from Dell or HP-- you're lucky if the guy on the phone even speaks English!
Comment of the year
I was talking to an employee at the Apple store near here, about the store.
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.
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.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Unlike most stores which has to lock their computers, due to the OS being so susceptible, most places that have Macs are open to explore, they probably are on a limited account but it's not the guided tour with safety-rails demos that you see on Windows PCs at most places.
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.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Back in the late 90's, the money fell out of the hardware market, at least for PC's. Yet somehow Apple is able to keep their margins high and the customers happy to pay for it. The logic goes that a company should stick to the knitting. Apple knew nothing about the music industry or making music players, it seemed like a bonehead move to do the iPod and iTunes. Look who proved the skeptics wrong. And now they're getting into retail, something that we laughed at Gateway for, the lack of retail floorspace being something that Dell was praised for, being a lean and nimble company. Now Dell is being criticized for their shitty service and Apple is praised for the innovation of opening retail stores.
I've come up with a new slashdot meme.
1. Apple decides to enter the [something improbable] market
2. Apple kicks ass at it in defiance of all logic
3. Turtleneck sweater
4. Profit
What really pisses me off is my current XP laptop is certainly going to be the last Windows unit I own so I'll be forced to make the jump on the next one to Ubuntu or OSX. I've grudgingly settled for Microsoft products because it's a shitty platform that also happens to support most of the software I use and shitty support is better than nothing. With OSX I'll still be able to run XP in a VM. Shit. Looks like I'm going to finally become one of those Mac weenies I used to make fun of.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
i'm an atheist. i've been to many different churches all over the world, representing many different religions (i'd say "dozens", but i don't think i've cracked two dozen). they never made me feel uncomfortable; to the contrary, they went out of their way to make me feel welcome, without ever pushing their particular religion, or any of it's dogma. same thing with the apple store: it's not like you walk in, and are immediately confronted by some fanatic raving about how macs are great. it's just a retail store- you can walk in, buy your crap, and walk out. if anything, the employees are unusually friendly.
as far as apple's concerned, there's no mythical "mac cult". nobody cares what computer you use; you've got some serious hang-ups, and should take whatever money you saved by purchasing generic pc hardware, and see a shrink.
why aren't you an apple customer any more?
The funny thing is, if you ever have had that "Apple Authorized Reseller" experience, is that the Apple Store is a HUGE improvement over these mom & pop shops. I was skeptical when Apple started pushing these people out-- I support small business, and you always met interesting and fact-filled people in those stores-- but after purchasing several items (an iPod and a camera) in an Apple Store, I was sold. Sure, I could have spent less buying those things on the web. But the Apple Store people let me play with them, and if the question I asked involved opening latches and looking inside (like in the case of the tethered camera I was looking at), they were cool with me doing that. In retrospect, I remember dealing with a lot of snarky people at those "Apple Authorized Resellers", and they were always dingy and cramped. The Apple Store was a good move for Apple, and fortunately, it appears to have been a good move for its customers as well.
I find the Apple store quite creepy.
expandfairuse.org
I think your name's not working - your reality is not being mastered at all.
You're projecting a lot, and when you drop in terms like "initiation", "Kool-Aid" and "better than thou" it's pretty clear that you've got issues with how you relate to a company.
I walked past my local Apple store today and it was absolutely packed. I saw staff helping people leave the store with carts full of new purchases. The store is almost always one of the busiest stores in the mall and I routinely see people leaving with PowerBooks and iMacs. If you were correct the store would usually be near empty.
It's tough to make a large dent in such a huge market. But Apple's market share is growing relatively quickly. It looks like so far this year they had a 40% increase in computer sales.
Developers: We can use your help.
Am I the only one who see something wrong with the Apple Stores being called a community center. I applaud Apple to there approach to make retail more friendly, but doesn't calling a store a community center just scream consumerism. I mean seriously the store is there with the intent to make Apple money, and give them an image which in turn makes them more money. Isn't a community center supposed to be run by the community that uses it, like a park, school, civic lodge (Elks, Rotary, etc), or public library? Is hanging out at the Apple Store just the more sophisticated "adult" alternative to hanging out at the mall?
"Can you take me back where I came from, can you take me back?
Can you take me back where I came from? Brother? Can you take me back? Can you take me back?
Ooh, can you take me where I came from? Can you take me
No, if anything your karma deserves a hit simply for posting a giant ad-hominem.
/g/, where your level of discourse is on par.
Stop being a retard and go the hell back to
I can't remember ever enjoying being at a fries. Being in Fry's is like shifting through every item available on the internet pilled into an enormous unorganized mound.
The basic concept of the store seems to be condense all of amazon.com (or in this case http://www.outpost.com/) into a single physical store. This basically means you get all of the items of output, with *no ability to search*.
Additionally, everything is overpriced. If they were smart, they'd be the costco of electronics stores, and instead of carrying a small quantity of every item you don't need at a high price, they'd carry a large quantity of stuff that everyone needs at a low price, and ignore specialty products.
I don't know why that was modded "Flamebait", maybe by a fanboy? Because what he says is true:
I thought it was just my perception while in the store. Well, over christmas I talked to my sister and her husband, (two of the most non-tech savvy people I know, a marketer and a lawyer.... I know). I assumed, being the slave to fashion that my sister is, that she'd have bought an iPhone right when they came out.
Instead, it turned out that both of them commented on the attitude of the Apple store sales people. They went in to buy her an iPhone, and the sales people all had this arrogant attitude about them using windows machines, etc. They were both really put off and left. Mind you - they were prepared to buy an iPhone and possibly a computer that day, and they walked out disgusted.
So 2 months ago, my sister's marketing company bought her a new Apple, and she told them she didn't want it. They gave it to her anyway, and it's been sitting in its box unopened ever since. She went out and bought a 'regular'[sic] laptop with her own money.
Now I'm not saying this to flame or bash Apple. I'm only relating this because Apple should understand that they're losing sales this way. The arrogance probably works to pick up egocentric people to whom a computer is a status symbol, (what's with that?), but they're alienating people who just want a machine to work. It seems that this is the crowd they should be trying to cater to, with all their "it just works" advertising.
If this self-righteous attitude isn't what Apple wants to portray in their stores, then they need to clean house a bit. I've noticed this same thing in a nearby west coast Apple store, and the above story happened in a NY Apple store. If this is the attitude they want to portray, (and I suspect this to be the case,) they're doing a stellar job.
I received similar love with MacBook and iPhone issues, but don't look for that kind of attention with a MacPro; the Genius Bars (at least in LA, which would seem to suggest everywhere) won't look at them and you're better off going to a plain old AppleCare center -- ironically, I brought my quad G5 to the nearest CompUSA when it had a mobo issue, and they took care of it as well as anything else. Of course you have that whole 'wait for a part from AppleCare fulfillment' nonsense.
Sadly, I'm no longer an Apple customerWhy not?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
I can't comment on the Apple's own stores, but my experiences with Apple resellers in Melbourne seems to match this. I enjoy the design of their products, which are a pleasure to use (though ubuntu is less effort than OS X for my research), but in some stores the staff really seemed arrogant. I hated buying from them, but did anyway, since at the time there were few resellers to choose from. They knew you wanted the product already, and figured you'd buy it whether or not they treated you well.
Luckily there's many more resellers these days, including many stores which used to only sell PCs, so service has improved a lot.
1. Organized, predictable, uniform. This means things are easy to find in the store, services are reliable, and the shopping experience is consistent from store to store.
2. Open, bright. Stores are well-lit, spacious, have an inviting entrance, and allow visitors to browse.
3. Products sell themselves. Rather than relying on salespeople to pressure customers to purchase goods, the stores consistently showcase the products and let the customer try it in order to make the purchasing decision on their own terms. Salespeople are there to answer questions, not push visitors into buying.
4. Availability of customer service. The customer-oriented services (Genius Bar, Studio, kids' area, demos) demonstrate that Apple is interested in making the shopping experience comfortable.
Now, bear in mind, Apple is in it to make money. That's just the reality. But the company's philosophy is that money is made by creating the best possible product and the best possible consumer experience. They don't do these things out of the goodness of their hearts; rather, these things are the consequence of the particular business model they have chosen. That their motives are sometimes misunderstood is unfortunate, not because of how it reflects upon Apple, but rather, how it is symptomatic of the fact that we as a society of consumers have become so jaded by the way the rest of corporate America approaches profitability in a free-market system that we DO get confused when a company DOESN'T believe that the easiest way to make money is to rape us for every last penny they can lie, cheat, and steal from us.
So, to be certain, the Apple Retail Stores are a classic example of retail design through careful analysis and re-evaluation of consumer behavior. They don't do these things because they make you feel good; they do them because, as a way of increasing profitability, it just plain WORKS. For instance, in-store cameras do not merely monitor visitors for security purposes--these are used to analyze traffic flow patterns, how long people spend in the various sections of the store, and so forth. This data is then used in research towards redesigning the stores or figuring out how marketing efforts should be distributed.
Finally, regarding those who have missed the point.... Every time I've been to Fry's I feel like I want to scream. Customer service is HORRIBLE; the crowds are rude; dealing with exchanges/returns is downright insane; and most of all, the whole place reeks of cheapness. I feel like I can't trust whatever I buy there, and even if I were to, I don't feel like I've saved much if anything at all. I'd rather buy online. And the whole "techie" thing--let's be honest, Apple isn't interested in marketing to the uber-nerd DIY hacker, whose "can I take it apart and customize the crap out of it" mentality runs counter to Apple's "we want to make everything work together seamlessly, including the shopping experience" philosophy. You may take great pride in those hacker skills, and that's great, but the article isn't about you. It's about the consumer who would've gotten a cheap-ass Dell not because they wanted to spend as little as possible and put Ubuntu on it, but because they just don't know any better. After all, this is the age of consumer electronics.
Why is a company replacing a product that they shouldn't have let out the door in the first place news?
Yes, why would you ever expect someone to fix their mistake? The nerve of these people, setting the customer right after something went wrong! They're going out of business in no time if they keep up this level of customer satisfaction.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Why not?
.Mac service. (I hear the new version finally made improvements here, but it's too late for me.)
A few reasons, some of which are Apple's fault and some of which aren't. The problems that are Apple-related:
1) Apple doesn't make a tablet. I've worked with tablets for awhile, and I was sold... after seeing how good the text recognition in Vista is, I was sold twice over. Now I have a slick little HP convertible that I can draw cartoons on if I'm bored, or fold the screen around and work with a database app. I could do this on an Apple by adding an expensive Wacom tablet, but it wouldn't be portable.
2) Apple doesn't make an affordable desktop with swappable video cards. Sadly, I'm one of the sadly World of Warcraft-addicted, and although it's virtually the only PC game I ever play, I can't spend the Apple premium for a computer that I can't even upgrade to run my favorite video game better. (I was running it on a dual 1.8 ghz G5 with a Radeon 9800 before, but that machine's too wimpy to really run WOW well with the expansion.)
3) OS X does a really, really, really crummy job of handling unreliable wifi networks. Like, you know, the one I'm connected to right now on my commuter train. At least Windows won't freeze up utterly when it can't ping a share; OS X did that regularly. And don't even get me started on Apple's
The last item is actually Microsoft-related, although it'll get me flamed on this board: Vista's really good. Seriously, I like it, it runs my old games I gave up back when I moved to Apple in the first place and it's definitely a move in the right direction usability-wise.
Also I'm bitter that Apple *STILL* hasn't replaced all the features of OS 9 in OS X. You can't put out version 10 of a product with fewer features than version 9! I don't know how Apple supporters justify that.
I still use the big G5 tower as a fileserver for my media files. It's got RAID-1 300GB drives in it. Other than that, no more Apple in my house.
That said, I obviously like Apple, I have nothing against them, they just aren't selling to my demographic.
Comment of the year
Sony...take lessons...from Apple? I think Sony is doing alright...
I'm not riding without wearing full leathers anymore, and I have the scars to prove why.
And yeah, they get grubby. I don't think there's any way to avoid that.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
But seriously, "for normal people, it's a very alien experience"? I just don't even know how you can say that kind of thing seriously. Are all people heterosexual men in your little fantasy world? That's also kind of mccreeps. What do they do in their free time? Not have sex, apparently.
Final comments: Many people who work for Apple Stores are indeed homosexual, bisexual, transexual, or questioning. I know this for a fact because I've worked at one. The fact that the stores make you uncomfortable, and that you think that they're similar to lingerie departments run by vagrants, indicates that you have a serious reality perspective/gender identity issue.
I've scanned most of the posts and all the stores mention make me very uncomfortable. They seem like total rip-off centers. I maybe eccentric, but I only shop at New Egg and Trader Joe's. If they could join up and open a brick and mortar shop, I would feel right at home. Welcome to New Joe's, your retail Samsung Centre that actually sells Samsung devices. P.S. CompUSA sucked.
That's why I bought my iPhone from an AT&T Wireless store rather than going to the local Apple store. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible.
That's why you go to the Apple store. Because instead of waiting at a cashier for someone to show up, or waiting much in line, Apple stores have wandering cashiers. And on the iPhone launch day they had dedicated lines just for the iPhone. I was out well before the poor bastards that went to the AT&T store...
The Apple stores are nothing if not expedient.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You totally missed that he was using that as an example of feeling out of place. Its not about his sexuality or anyone elses. Thats simply a comparison that most people would catch.
Since there is an Apple Store a short walk from where I work, I stop by quite a bit. Browsing around and trying out the new stuff is pretty cool, and that part is a great experience. Actually trying to buy something from them has been a huge hassle, for me at least. I'm an impulse buyer - when I want something, I want it now, not in 3 - 5 days, so I like to just pick it up at the store.
First of all, it can be hard to find someone to help you. I've waited for longer than 10 minutes in the past to get someone to go back and grab the machine I want.
Second, they often don't have things (recently, it was the 24" iMac) in very high quantity at all. It took me 4 times (and lots of phone calls) to actually get my hands on one. Even more frustrating - they can never tell you when they will be getting more in, or how many they will get. You think a technology company could somehow devise some way to keep track of inventory and be able to tell when they'll get more?
Lastly, simply checking out can take forever. Apple has the most inefficient checkout process I have seen in my entire life. I have gone in there to pick out something simple and waited in a line of only 4 people for half an hour before giving up and getting it at office depot instead.
The stores are cool, but I wish they'd improve the actual buying experience, because (at least at the one in Utah), it really sucks.
You're kidding, right?
If you know of some way to have perfect QA on a complicated electronic product then go into business because you're about to become rich selling your services to every tech company on the planet.
A real conversation I had:
I'd like to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse.
I'm sorry, we don't have any.
Don't have any? It's an Apple branded product. Are you out of stock.
Kind of. The new ones are coming out soon so we sent all of our old ones back.
You sent away all of your old model stock long before you got a shipment of your new models, leaving you unable to sell anything?
Uh, yeah.
How long have you been out of stock?
A week or two.
How long do you expect to remain out of stock.
We were supposed to have them by now. But probably another week or two.
And so you have nothing to sell people who really want to give you money for a wireless keyboard and mouse, any wireless keyboard and mouse, until then?
No. Sorry.
I can see why they call you geniuses.
Please tell me that once school is back in session your mom is going to cut back your computer use some...
My macbook battery crumped a couple days before Christmas. Pretty sure it was due to a known bug, but the machine was already 1.5yrs old ... out of warranty. I called, they said I had to bring it in before they could tell me if they could replace it... Place was packed.
Finally, guy calls my name, takes a look at my machine and gets me a brand new battery. Made me happy.
My biggest bitch with Apple right now: why won't they help fix up openoffice and ship it with Macs? I use openoffice all the time on Linux, once in a while on windows... pretty good both places. On the mac, when I have to, I run oo thru X11.. it's slow, buggy, crashy.
Here on my wife's mom's brand new machine, we're trying Neooffice (native, not thru X11 oo version):
PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
225 soffice.bi 1.8% 0:18.50 15 466 802 57M 15M 93M 983M
Almost a gigabyte of allocated memory???
It locked up earlier.. and becuase the "force quit" didn't work (funny how force quit often doesn't work), she found the terminal (good woman) called me up. Okay, "type ps space aux space, that little vertical bar character space grep office" and then "kill -9...." But that's not such a user friendly deal. If my mother in law calls with this problem, it's gonna be a power cycle!!! Ouch!
If they're not going to ship Appleworks free anymore, they should at least help fix the one real alternative to Word. Why should we pay 1100 for a computer and then over 100 more for software to type a freaking letter or directions on how to use the computer??
very feminine beauty parlor, or a lingerie department....They know their target demographic.
Now that you mention it, I see a much higher percentage of women in the Apple store, than I do in the CompUSA a few blocks away. There isn't a Fry's in NYC, so I can't compare to that although earlier posts have hailed it as a tech mecca. I wonder what percentage of Fry's customers are women?
We are all just people.
I've got a Tablet PC too, and I tried Vista but am about to move back to XP tablet edition despite the handwriting improvements.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But seriously, "for normal people, it's a very alien experience"? I just don't even know how you can say that kind of thing seriously. Are all people heterosexual men in your little fantasy world? That's also kind of mccreeps. What do they do in their free time? Not have sex, apparently.
LOL. Um, projecting just a teeny bit? Why don't you go back and re-read what I wrote. It's totally unambiguous what the "normal people" is referring to. That you totally changed what I wrote to "normal people == heterosexual" is just... bizarre. You might mention it to your analyst.
It is not normal to feel uncomfortable around places designed to attract the gender opposite to yours.
It's perfectly normal, and quite common. Newsflash: men and women's brains are wired differently, on the average.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Last time I was there was with my mum, to get her a macbook + USB modem. Except they forgot to pack the modem, and when I went back to get it I was called (in thinly veiled terms) a liar, a thief, and an idiot. It took a 15 minute lecture on what a moron I am before they gave me the damn thing, and then as the icing on the cake the sales assistant held open the bag and asked me in a sarcastic tone to verify that the modem was in there.
Screw them teaching my mum to use iPhoto, how about just making sure their customers don't leave the store wanting to strangle someone?
When I go into an Apple store, the people there look like... everyone else.
Hipsters. Kids. Old people. Fat people. Bald people. People bragging about their Macs. People saying "man, I could never buy a Mac, they're just so weird."
You seem to be projecting. It's like whenever someone who is too alternative for the rest of the world starts talking about Starbucks, they say "have you ever tried to walk into a Starbucks and just order a cup of drip coffee? They look at you like you're an ALIEN!" Whereas, those of us who live in reality, notice that in virtually every line at Starbucks, even in Seattle or Silicon Valley, there is someone ordering drip coffee. And they get treated like every other effing customer.
See: Onion, The. "Man constantly bringing up the fact that he doesn't own a Television."
Sony's share price has done marginally okay; gone up from just over 40 five years ago, to 54 today. But I don't have to tell you what Apple's done over the past 5 years.
And oh yeah, Apple's market cap is over 3x Sony's.
Exactly. I'm averse to crowds -- it's not pomposity, though the accusation would certainly be nothing new. I loved the Apple Store in the local mall because it was laid back, and the store seemed to always have between 5 and 30 customers in it. It's a tiny store, but you could browse and look around in a relatively serene way, and speak normally to the sales staff, who had time to be helpful. Now, despite having opened a second, 400% larger Apple Store in a mall less than 10 minutes away, both stores are packed to the gills whenever I go. The aisles are so full, it's hard to get anywhere, and sometimes the checkout line winds so long that you can't enter the store until purchases have been made. The same store that had 30 customers before now has more than 100 at any given time, and I feel like I'm in a nightclub because I have to practically shout to the employees just to be heard. I've actually seen employees set at the entrance to prevent more customers from entering the store to (I presume) comply with fire regulations.
This really isn't complaining. I think the new popularity is a good thing, even if it makes it harder for me as an individual to shop there. However, if anyone has a perception of Apple Stores as swanky, empty boutiques full of overpriced, overhyped products, they're either remembering what some of the stores were like two to three years ago, or simply don't have a fire marshal's eye for what constitutes "packed".
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
Perhaps you should give Pages a go. Cheaper than MS Office, and easier to use than either MS Office, Neooffice, or Appleworks. Or if you just want to type a simple letter, TextEdit can do that, and even save it one of the various office formats among other formats.
1. they don't make Appleworks anymore, hence why they don't ship it with new machines.
2. Apple has the Pages software, part of iWork. Why would they want to help their competition?
3. ??????
4. We should not ask questions of the Apple, merely worship it as the ultimate status symbol of the modern elite.
Anybody want my mod points?
I was visiting San Francisco a few years ago when on my last day before returning home decided to visit the Apple Store. I was looking for a demonstration of the new version of Shake. An employee came and did everything he could to install a full copy of Shake on a machine but they only had demo versions. Since it was my last day in frisco and didn't want to spend the rest of the evening at the store this guy sold me a book at a bargain price so I could install the 30 days demo included with the book. The service in these stores is superb. I'm a PC user BTW.
I own a Dell, I complained about a loud fan noise via email. Got a response about arranging a service visit. Tech came and removed the fan. With other issues I have gotten replacement parts or service visits with minimal fuss. I also do not have any issues understanding the service staff, while some have Indian accents all speak English quite well.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
I've only been inside an apple store once (it was in a mall) and it had a lot of people in it but I got a really bad vibe from the place. Elitism perhaps? I'm not sure. It just didn't seem like a good place to hang out for too long.
Meh.
Sure, I've helped many people with computer/tech issues and they do have an appreciation of my level of knowledge afterwards.
However, I don't walk around with a badge that reads "Tech Genius" on it. Most people assume that employees of a particular company SHOULD be knowledgeable about their products.
They don't need a "traffic sign" to reassure them. They just need good service.
To act like there isn't an atmosphere of arrogant superiority surrounding the Apple/Mac image is childish. Just watch any of their PC vs. Mac commercials and it oozes.
That is their whole marketing ideology: Buy a Mac/iPod/iPhone or you are an unhip loser.
As for the name?? What is wrong with just calling it "Customer Service", "Help Desk", "Service Center" or "Technical Support"?? Are they saying they are Geniuses compared to all other tech support groups on the planet?? Sure they are upholding the Apple image of being better than all others, but there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
I just think that many people who have not been indoctrinated into the Mac mentality are put off by the image that Apple projects. I feel the same way about designer clothing like Tommy or Polo. It's the cultural snobbery that you aren't worthy if you do not wear particular brands of clothing. Apple plays into this same mentality that thrives on the materialistic aspect of our society.
Depends on your definition of affordable. I play WoW on my quad-core 2.66 Ghz Mac Pro (with swappable ATI X1900) and it's awesome. I previously played on a Dell P4 2.4 Ghz and ATI X850.
I'm sorry your G5 sucked at WoW and couldn't be upgraded. Think of a 1.5 Ghz Celeron with an AGP slot and DDR1 RAM - there's really no way to upgrade that machine to be good either. In both cases you'd have to toss the old machine and buy a new one, since the new processors, memory, and video card wouldn't be compatible with the old motherboard.
Yeah, the Finder sucks. Then again, Explorer also locks up on me when the share is no longer available.
Since I've never used version 9, I have no idea what's missing. I've seen some lists of "missing features" but it's always things like "some of the Apple menu functionality was replaced by the Dock, and I liked the Apple menu better". Personal preference isn't a missing feature. If there are actual missing features, I'm curious what they are?
"Apple stores are useless."
Hey, you actually got to talk to a GIRL though!!! (Without paying $5.99/min.)
And bring the wife and the kids!
Yes, why would you ever expect someone to fix their mistake? The nerve of these people, setting the customer right after something went wrong!
Apple fanboys are making a big deal out of Apple doing something that's not a big deal (fixing their mistake). Congrats for missing the point.The big difference between the Apple store and big box stores is the nice fat profit margin. Better profit margin = better pay = better employees. Theres not a huge mystery to it. Since Apple has pricing agreements with all of its retailers it ensures it can not be undercut. No competition means that they can keep prices high and keep their boutique stores open.
Who buys pr0n on DVD any more? Have you not heard of broadband internet? It's all the rage. Ummm...are you 65?
Fry's blows for the most part. Yeah sure if you want to buy a "Scamtech" monitor that flames out right after the year warranty is up or purchase a NIC card that doesn't have drivers for Vista and causes bizarre errors on your XP box or if you enjoy multiple Pakistani men fawning to "write you up" because it helps their quota (consequently they don't have to go back to the cash register pit) or you want to have a sales person that knows absolutely nothing about the product you want to purchase or if you get off on paper mache pyramids...space shuttles....Von Wolfenburg castles...then Fry's is for you. When they actually have something advertised that you DO want--say like a 500GB Seagate hard drive--then of course they are sold out. Not to mention the cut throat parking lot and long lines to round out the whole experience
Yes, this is a flame and yes it is off topic, but the bottom line is that the Fry's "experience" in my opinion (for the reasons explained above and much more).
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
What really pisses me off is my current XP laptop is certainly going to be the last Windows unit I own so I'll be forced to make the jump on the next one to Ubuntu or OSX. I've grudgingly settled for Microsoft products because it's a shitty platform that also happens to support most of the software I use and shitty support is better than nothing. With OSX I'll still be able to run XP in a VM. Shit. Looks like I'm going to finally become one of those Mac weenies I used to make fun of.
I bought my first PC (a 286 that came with nothing other than DOS) back in like '88/89, for a whopping $2300. From then until August of this year, I was a PC man, buying cases and upgrading the contents in a sort of never ending upgrade cycle. I learned a lot about PC assembly that I would never have learned otherwise, but mostly it was a constant pain in the butt, and undoubtedly very expensive. I learned to loathe each version of Microsoft's Windows along the way as well. 95, 98, 2000, XP - while each was an improvement over the previous versions, each seemed poorly thought out, poorly implemented and buggy as hell. We won't even go into the major pain in the ass of constantly updating antivirus software, antispyware etc. I would love to have switched to a Mac at any point in this cycle, but they were always just out of price reach, and I couln't justify it.
Yes, during this time I did play with various Linux distros, FreeBSD etc. I used them for work mostly and I enjoyed using them immensely, but my home system had to remain under the fell control of MS - because I play games. If you play PC games you *must* run a windows system unless you are prepared to wait a few years for your favourite game to come out for the Mac, and prepared to see only 1 in 50 games ever have a Mac version.
In August, I bought a 20" IMac, installed Bootcamp, installed a clean new copy of XP SP2, and now I have the best of both worlds. When I work on my computer, I do so in OSX, when I want to play games I boot into the toy OS and play one of my games. The only other application I use under Windows at the moment is Firefox because sometimes when you are gaming you need to look up data on a website. Other than that I only spend time in Windows when gaming. If I did need to run an old Windows legacy application, I have a copy of Parallels installed so I can run it virtually if I need to in any case. The IMac and OSX meet all of my needs, and so far faultlessly. I haven't had a single problem, a single glitch, or a single instance of anything I couldn't do under OSX that I used to do under XP, and it all runs faster and more efficiently than it ever did under my XP box. I admit it took some adaption (I don't like OSX file dialogs at all, I miss the tree of folders from Windows immensely) and theres still a lot to learn, but so far the Mac has simply worked perfectly.
I am afraid I am totally converted. The IMac/OSX computing experience is so far above what I had under Windows its like comparing driving a Jaguar to driving a Yugo. It was worth every dollar it cost me to get the beautiful desktop monitor-cum-computer that I ended up with, and I have more room on my (physical) desktop to boot. I expect this system will be more than sufficient for my needs for the next few years - even with gaming taken into consideration - and I won't have to upgrade anything to speak of. If I do decide to upgrade then the old system will have retained a lot of its old value unlike a replaced PC which I usually end up giving away because they are pretty worthless by the time they need replacing. I feel free of the constant recycling and upgrading system I had gotten locked into, and to be honest it feels great. Hopefully it still feels great 3 years from now (I recognize my opinions may have changed by then). Five months in though and I don't regret it in the slightest.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
......Apple followers I'm sure they like it, but for normal people.......
Maybe you'd be well advised to look up the definition of "normal" before you consider all the folks who crowd Apple stores, even at 2 in the morning, as not being normal. Is it possible, could it be, just maybe, that YOU are the one who falls outside of what is considered "normal"?
All theory is gray
Are you twelve? Seriously.
You are also wearing "an affectation" every single day -- From the tenor of your posts, I'd guess that affectation to be "I'm a gigantic loaf of American-made Wonderbread".
If they want to be scruffy, more power to them. God forbid people deviate from the societal "affectation-norm".
Anyone who refuses a perfectly usable new computer and insists on buying a "regular" laptop out of pocket has a wild hair up their ass.
Here's my guess: Your sister has stockholm syndrome. After years of using Windows machines, she doesn't want to admit that she might have been using an inferior product. Instead, she projects arrogance to justify her original position, and her continued Windows-usage. Buying her own "regular" laptop without even trying the provided one is clearly emotionally-driven behavior.
I've seen similar behavior at work, where we've mandated the use of either 1) Linux, or 2) A Mac. It keeps our support costs down and productivity high, and we allow for Windows if the user can provide a justifiable business case for adopting Windows-only software. That doesn't stop the very occasional new employee from throwing a tantrum about being forced to use a Mac -- they simply don't *have* logical business case for using Windows.
Wow. A company that advertises its products as "hip" and scorns those who don't buy them. What an innovative strategy Apple has, being the only corporation every to employ this mind-bottling new advertising paradigm.
..... at no point did they ever bother trying to figure out what was wrong; the solution would invariably be to reformat and reinstall......
That's because a malware infested or registry crocked Windows box is almost impossible to cleanse of that crap and be absolutely sure the system is totally rid of it. Reformatting and re-installing is the only SURE way to make Windows clean and working properly. This almost never needed in the case of a Mac.
Most programs on OSX don't need some special uninstaller program in order to cleanse it entirely from the computer. Just drag it to the trash -- it's gone for good. Apple "geniuses" don't need to be on top of nearly as many pieces of diverse hardware and can therefore be trained in a much greater depth in the relatively few Apple products they have brought to them. Apple's superior hardware and software design reflects on these people behind the counter and makes them seem a lot more like real geniuses.
Don't be too hard on those poor "squad geeks", they have it a lot harder because they are dealing with Windows systems that did not really get designed, but just sort of evolved over time.
All theory is gray
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
True, in comparison to other manufacturers', Apple's after-sales support is incredibly good. I have a friend who told me that when he sent his iMac G5 in a few years ago to be repaired because a single column of pixels down the side had gone, it was replaced with a brand-new Intel iMac with all the files transferred across for him.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I'm pretty sure that those "grubby leathers" aren't so much a fashion statement as they are for safety.
OSx86 FTW
The "Apple Authorized Resellers" are the only shops apart from Best Buy selling Mac stuff where I live. I've had a different experience with them- "Hey, could I install Leopard on a normal PC?" "It'll take some work- bring in the computer and we'll tell you what will work and what won't." "Here it is." "The wireless won't work and that's it. If that's OK we'll sell you the disc and do it."
Of course, this is China. Such a thing could never happen in America because of Apple licensing.
OSx86 FTW
"where we've mandated the use of either 1) Linux, or 2) A Mac"
Now that's somewhere I want to work for.
OSx86 FTW
Not true. If you close the lid, the laptop goes to sleep. Please read what he wrote, before criticizing.
I lived in (North) Dallas a couple of years ago, and lived very close to the Dallas Galleria. Needless to say, I went there often.
Anyway, one winter holiday weekend I went to the Galleria and Nokia setup a small kiosk to display their latest electronic gadgets. Most of the devices were already on the market; only a handful were coming out "in the next month or two".
When I asked about purchasing any of these devices, they said I couldn't because this was a "display only" kiosk. When I asked about purchasing a power adapter for my existing Nokia cell phone, they said "display only" again.
Bear in mind the U.S. Nokia headquarters (in Las Colinas, TX) is only about 15-20 minute drive from the Dallas Galleria. If you wanted to recycle your old Nokia cell phone, that's where they would go.
I walked away wondering...why would anyone setup a "display only" kiosk *and* in the backyard of the HQ? They didn't hand out anything to create buzz, and they weren't helping existing customers.
Sony is a much larger company than Apple, making far more profit. That was my point. Share prices are generally only interesting to shareholders.
Ontario, Canada, actually.
I suppose Dells and HPs are 100% flawless right? Yeah...
The Genius Bar staff are Mac Geniuses. They're supposed to know a lot about Macs(and sometimes they aren't as knowledgeable as you'd think). If this makes you uncomfortable somehow maybe you should see a psychiatrist.
I'd guess that affectation to be "I'm a gigantic loaf of American-made Wonderbread"
I have no idea what that even means.
If they want to be scruffy, more power to them. God forbid people deviate from the societal "affectation-norm".
There are people who legitimately who present themselves differently because that's truly what they. The vast majority of people do it because they feel nondescrip -- they want to be noticed, because they can't be noticed by talent, looks, etc. So they look around and find something easy. There's no talent required to get a tattoo, dying their hair, getting a piercing, etc.
"Affectation-norm"? Since you don't seem to know what "affectation" means, I'll tell you: "a: the act of taking on or displaying an attitude or mode of behavior not natural to oneself or not genuinely felt b: speech or conduct not natural to oneself : artificiality"
Are you twelve? Seriously.
Have you ever noticed that teenagers typically want to do this kind of nonsense, yet give it up when they get more mature and more self-confident? In other words, affectations are typically cries of a pathetic lack of self esteem.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
My gripe with the local Apple store is twofold. First, a lot of the products a broken; almost none of the digital cameras on display ever work, and quite often many of the headphones and speakers and such are out of order as well. A lot of these display items also lack clearly marked prices, which I always consider to be very bad form.
Second, it's nice to have a support section (Genius Bar), but if I have to make an appointment and wait for two hours to talk to someone to ask a simple pre-sales question which the sales staff couldn't answer, I'm definitely not going to be impressed.
there is something to "have it immediatly". It had been the reason why I had bought a Dell 10 years ago in Austin in a factory outlet. I seldom leave an apple store without a spontaneous buy. An other reason for the success is the "paradox of choice". I never had second thoughts after the buy in an apple store because I knew the prize is the same as online prize for Apple products (the iphone prize drop was an exception). When I visit a Dell online shop now, I get evertime a different prize offer for pretty much the same setup. Coupons, special deals, business or home prizes etc make buying things painfully confusing. There is in genreal too much choice.
ow please - apple stores are the last vestiges of communism - we dont know if we will ever have item x in stock , who else has it or if it will ever be delivered .. just like trying to hunt down toilet paper in any eastern european country circa 1980...and i speak from experience in both cases- I wanted to purchase a macbook pro (in palo alto of all places) and that is the sort of detailed and helpful answer i got ... getting hold of the aforementioned toiled paper actually turned out easier ....
Perhaps the moderators struggle to distinguish informative from imaginative?
1/3 of jokes get modded OT. If you get the joke, mod 1 in 3 insightful/interesting/underrated to restore karma balance.
take a look at this: http://www.spymac.com/details/?2321924
I think the key to their success, from my observations, is the unsnickering support given even to the obviously inept patrons. I was stunned by the patience shown by a Mac agent calmly explaining that a pair of years old CD write ables could not be relied upon indefinitely. This individual owned an older unit that was brought into the shop. I was on the verge of punching some sense into this individual myself, having become frustrated by the repeated question where the backup problem resided. After this client the agent took a break. Upon their return my first question was: do you have padded rooms where you could laugh yourself silly without danger of harming yourself? Despite my leading, cynical questioning this individual kept their professionalism intact. Hence, at least part of the Mac Store secret of success is real customer service and support.
and hookers.
And just forget the hookers!
I finally got to visit an Apple store and I had such high expectations after the spate of such stories like the one in NYT. Quite frankly I was underwhelmed and disappointed. The stories always write about stores in Manhattan and San Francisco, but this was a top ten U.S. city and quite frankly it was a rather plain store. No grand architectural details, nothing special over any of the other mall stores.
;
The difference was in layout and help. No boxes, if you wanted to buy anything it was in the back. Lots of products on display and no staff hovering over you. So it was easy to try things out and the minute you had a question help was instantly available and knowledgeable.
In contrast to CompUSA,Gateway and now Circuit City. All three fired the well paid help, piled the boxes high and locked things behind glass cases. Then paid bonuses to execs when sales tanked that cost more than what was saved by the store conversions.
It seems rather a simple formula to succeed in retail, too bad far few companies try it. Works for me cause I bought an iPod. After I see what future products are coming out after Jobs address in mid-January I am buying a Mac laptop.
As usual the newspapers have it all wrong. But look to see electronics retailers putting in glass stairways in future stores and genius bars staffed with minimum wage teenagers
Man Holmes
A few months ago, my dad needed to replace an ancient PC at home, and asked me for a recommendation. I recommended that he get a Mac, telling him that Macs today are drastically different from Macs of the '90s, and that he should go to an Apple Store to play around with one. He called me from the Apple Store, and I walked him through a few things he would need for his work, such as how to run SSH from the Terminal. He was convinced that getting a Mac would be a good idea.
A few minutes later, he called me again, asking if there was any particular reason he should buy the Mac from the Apple Store. I told him that prices for Macs were more or less the same everywhere, so he could buy one from wherever he wanted. He explained that the Apple Store had a restocking charge for returns, so he would get his Mac from Fry's instead.
The next day, he went to Fry's, and while he was there he somehow changed his mind and got a Media Center PC with Vista instead.
My hard drive just died. Hope they're as nice in the Authorized Service shops (don't have "real" Apple Stores in Denmark)
Ask, and ye shall receive. Just add Greasemonkey and stir.
:)
Userscripts is also your friend if you're tired of Roland, want more screen real estate, or miss BSD (though I feel it's time I uninstalled that last script, it's kind of moot when there's nothing new there, mostly all of the time.
The scripts can also work in Opera (haven't tested the mentioned ones, though), and there are plugins for IE and Safari (though not the Windows beta) to be found online. HTH
...then imagine walking into a Christian fundamentalist church as an atheist.
I've done this except it wasn't a fundamentalist church, I was there with regulars, and no one knew I was an atheist. On the whole, it was a rather average collection of average people trying to be pleasant. I assume that if I had gone in brandishing my atheism like a weapon the reaction would have been different.
Leave him alone he's a *nix guru.
Depends on your definition of affordable. I play WoW on my quad-core 2.66 Ghz Mac Pro (with swappable ATI X1900) and it's awesome. I previously played on a Dell P4 2.4 Ghz and ATI X850.
But a Mac Pro is super overkill for this. I don't need 87 Xeon CPUs (or whatever the hell they put in them to make them so expensive), I just want to play WOW. But I can't justify the expense when it costs literally three times what a suitable Vista machine costs. I don't know what you do with it, but for playing World of Warcraft no definition of the word "affordable" fits the Mac Pro.
Tell you what, if you're willing to buy me one, I'll definitely switch back, ok?
I'm sorry your G5 sucked at WoW and couldn't be upgraded. Think of a 1.5 Ghz Celeron with an AGP slot and DDR1 RAM - there's really no way to upgrade that machine to be good either. In both cases you'd have to toss the old machine and buy a new one, since the new processors, memory, and video card wouldn't be compatible with the old motherboard.
Yeah, that's why I didn't replace it with a 1.5 ghz Celeron with an AGP slot.
What was the point of you typing that? Seriously? I don't get how it's relevant... even dirt cheap $400 computers don't use AGP anymore. And nothing's used a Celeron in ages.
Or are you implying that my G5 was as old/obsolete as a 1.5 ghz Celeron? You might have a point there if not for the following points:
1) A 1.5 ghz Celeron, even when brand new, costs something around $800.
2) My dual 1.8 ghz G5, when brand new, costs something around $2100.
Yes, yes, we all get it: You're rich, you don't care about spending uber-bucks on computers. That does't apply to me, sorry.
Yeah, the Finder sucks. Then again, Explorer also locks up on me when the share is no longer available.
Explorer sucks less than Finder in several important ways. Or at least ways that are important to me. If it locks on when shares are no longer available, I've never seen it... not to say you're wrong, just that I don't experience that problem.
Since I've never used version 9, I have no idea what's missing. I've seen some lists of "missing features" but it's always things like "some of the Apple menu functionality was replaced by the Dock, and I liked the Apple menu better". Personal preference isn't a missing feature. If there are actual missing features, I'm curious what they are?
I love how you've never used Mac OS 9 and yet you come at this problem with the approach that I'm the one who's lying.
The huge one is a spatial file browser, but like you said Finder sucks, has sucked for all the OS X releases, and I think it's probably time to give up hope for that. Too bad Apple doesn't recognize that the original designers of Mac OS might have *gasp* actually done some usability research! Or had some expertise! But no, let's trash it all and start over with mediocrity.
The feature I used all the time in OS 9 Finder that's never been added to OS X Finder is the feature where you can drag a folder window to the bottom of the screen and Finder would create a pop-up tab for it there. (They used to call this Tabbed Folders, but now when you say that people assume the tabs are in the folders, so I won't use that term.)
Apple reluctantly added colored labels back in, the 'drill down while dragging' feature back in, and they've vaguely simulated the Apple Menu behavior in a slow and irritating way, but they've never even slightly attempted to bring that feature back.
This isn't a "personal preference" it was a feature that OS 9 had and OS X does not have. (Whether or not you used this feature may be a personal preference, but that doesn't change the fact that OS X does not have it. I used it all the freakin' time.)
BTW before you criticize OS 9, or call everyone who's missing features from it a liar, maybe you could spend a few microns actually using it, huh? You won't get a response as hostile as mine next time.
A lot of my complaints really boil
Comment of the year
That's been fixed already. I don't remember when, but I haven't seen it happen in a long time. (Yeah, it was really annoying.)
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.
Comment of the year
According to Google Finance:
.58%
Sony annual net profit margin =
Apple annual net profit margin = 14.56%
It appears that while Sony has the HUGE numbers on its side, Apple is far more profitable.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
It's also true that if he RTFM he would realize that it IS possible to operate it with the lid closed. You just have to know WTF you are doing.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
This is probably one of the reasons I recently went for a MacBook. The salespeople were there to assist and able to answer any question ranging from "Is that a computer?" to "Is the Darwin kernel a microkernel or a monolithic kernel?". There were about eight computers ranging from laptops to high end workstations set up so that interested shoppers could just walk in and check their mail. As for the "cult" atmosphere I can do nothing except agree, but hey, it's Apple.
Eh? Profit isn't measured in percentages! Sony is far more profitable, because it makes far more money.
So 2 months ago, my sister's marketing company bought her a new Apple, and she told them she didn't want it. They gave it to her anyway, and it's been sitting in its box unopened ever since. She went out and bought a 'regular'[sic] laptop with her own money.
So a couple of dumb sales staff annoyed her so much she went out and spent a thousand dollars or so to avoid using the product they sold?
Wow. She really let them get to her.
In response to everything you've said here, I say... perhaps.
Perhaps, if you're one to buy into the marketing of said companies, and rely on that marketing to make your decisions about what you're going to buy.
The problem is, not many people are willing to think for themselves and actually do a little research before spending their money. They rely on cheap, warm and fuzzy ads. Not to mention, they also rely on their almost primal intuition to buy things to impress people that they hate, or to make up for their shortcomings as humans by propping themselves up with their image purchasing. To this day, I'll never understand how people fall for that crap... Apple ads included.
But then again, I'm thankful that people fall for that crap, as it's important to my livelihood. Ironic, eh?
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
Wrong. Apple is almost twice as profitable.
Sony's 2007 Net Income = $1.7B ($70.3B in revenue). (http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/statemnt.aspx?Symbol=SNE)
Apple's 2007 Net Income = $3.5B ($24B in revenue)
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/10/22results.html
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
It's not as simple as that, though of course the Mac Tax does come into it. I found the same kind of enthusiastic employees selling Apple kit at other retail outlets like CompUSA (RIP) back before the Apple Stores opened, because they wanted to sell Apple kit, and I assume that most of them are working for Apple now.
Google her picture. Gorgeous! Let's see if they would let a street person managing his Ron Paul website stay around. Or a bag lady.
Yes. How old was your G5 when you decided to replace it?
The main point was that both the Windows and Mac paths have some dead ends. It's not some crazy Apple conspiracy that you can't upgrade your G5; it happens with all technology.
Macs have generally been more expensive (moreso before the switch to Intel); I don't see how that invalidates the comparison of technological dead ends.
Then I should've phrased it better, but I was just trying to avoid the "just Google it" response. I did google it, and didn't come up with anything enlightening.
I like how you equate asking for an example with calling people liars. Not everyone is out to get you.
So, the list:
- Spatial file browser
- Tabbed folders
- Stuff thats actually is in OS X and so irrelevant to the discussion (colored labels, drill down)
I guess we have different definitions of features then. I'd consider a method of organizing my files one feature, and a method of launching applications another. Both OS 9 and OS X have these. They use different methods of doing so, but both can do so.
For example, spatial vs. non-spatial file managers - they both do the same thing (organize files), one's just nicer to use. Which one is nicer depends on who you talk to (I happen to like non-spatial), so I'd call that a personal preference.
Tabbed folders vs. folders in the dock (or Stacks in 10.5) - correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like they do the same thing: let you quickly access commonly used files and folders. I'd consider the Quick Launch bar in the Windows task bar the same feature, just done differently. Again, which one is nicer depends on the user.
So, you consider these two items missing features; I'd say their underlying features are there, just implemented differently.
I've criticized OS 9? Where? I had no idea. Must be the same sentence I used the word liar.
As for using OS9 myself, I don't own a PowerPC machine, or know anyone that does. That makes it a bit difficult to try out OS 9.
Indeed, if Windows makes you happier, use it.
I've not experienced this. I've moved Skype, the DVD player, and several other programs out of Applications to different folders and they seem to work just fine. I actually moved them, not created an alias. Can you describe your experience being unable to move applications a little more?
Yes. How old was your G5 when you decided to replace it?
The main point was that both the Windows and Mac paths have some dead ends. It's not some crazy Apple conspiracy that you can't upgrade your G5; it happens with all technology.
Well, der. First of all, if that was your point, you could have just stated it instead of bringing up that Celeron nonsense. Secondly, *my* point was that while I used to care about OS quality enough to buy a $2100 machine over a $800 machine, I'm not willing to do the same overkill now. Since Apple doesn't sell a computer in my price range, I don't own an Apple computer. It's simple.
If you want to pay $2400 for a computer to play World of Warcraft worse than an equivalent $800 PC, that's your business. I've smartened up.
I guess we have different definitions of features then. I'd consider a method of organizing my files one feature, and a method of launching applications another. Both OS 9 and OS X have these. They use different methods of doing so, but both can do so.
I like my definition better than yours. "Spatial file organization" is a feature, whether you think it is or not. If you define a feature as the most basic element, then hardly anything has any features at all-- what would be the point of buying an Audi over a Kia? Both have the "feature" of an engine and tires.
Spatial file browsing is a feature that Mac OS version 9 had, but Mac OS version 10 does not have. The fact that missing features don't bother Mac users bothers me; imagine the outcry if Windows Vista 2 was missing a feature, *any feature* from the current Windows Vista. It would be on the news, there'd be inflammatory Slashdot articles, etc. Why don't Mac users care?
Tabbed folders vs. folders in the dock (or Stacks in 10.5) - correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like they do the same thing: let you quickly access commonly used files and folders. I'd consider the Quick Launch bar in the Windows task bar the same feature, just done differently. Again, which one is nicer depends on the user.
You're wrong, which is understandable because this feature has never been duplicated. If it had been, I probably wouldn't have posted that OS X doesn't have it, hmm?
The difference is that Tabbed Folders, when they pop up, *are* the folder in question... the other features you mention (Quick Launch, Dock icons) only allow you to launch files. With the Tabbed Folders feature, you could drag icons around, you could right-click to Get Info, you could do any file operation you could do in a normal folder, and when you're done the tab would just pop back down out of your way.
A typical usage scenario is that I have one Tabbed Folder with a bunch of documents and another with a bunch of applications. I can pop up the document one and double-click to launch a document, or pop up the applications one and double-click to launch an application. (Actually single-click, since I had that tab configured to display as "buttons", another feature which isn't available on OS X. FYI.) That's as far as your imagination has taken you.
Now let's say I want to open a document, a text file, in Word instead of in the default application for text files. I can grab the text file's icon from the document Tabbed Folder to begin a drag, the Tabbed Folder pops back down out of my way, then I can drag it over to the applications Tabbed Folder, which pops up in view, and drop the icon on the application icon of my choice. That's a far quicker way of doing than operation than opening both windows manually to point to the right place and doing the drag, or opening up Word first and using the Open menu item, then selecting text files from the little menu. And it's something both OS X and Windows Explorer have no equivalent to.
So yes, Tabbed Folders let you "quickly access files and folders". But you were defining "access" as "launch" and Tabbed Folders let you do any folder/file operation in them, then they'd pop neatly out of your way. I built an entire workfl
Comment of the year
Apple doesn't seem to support crappy software. It's why, after all, they went with KHTML for Safari instead of Gecko. There are a few problems with OpenOffice that preclude Mac support (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/List_of_OpenOffice.org_Mac_OS_X_issues_and_problems)
In the end it was cheaper and faster for Apple to write their own apps from the ground up (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) than to rely on OpenOffice to even have a Mac port of an existing application.
If that is the case, it makes more sense to continue investing into iWork rather than into OpenOffice.
GPL Deconstructed
That's all in your head. Your post actually says more about your own hang-ups and insecurities than it does the post you describe.
A lot of people shop at the Apple Store because they have good discounts for Educational users, and a lot of Apple's base is in Education or Students. When I bought my MacBook Pro, just being a Higher Ed employee got me a free iPod for my wife, and a free printer, on top of the 10% or so discount on the hardware and the 3-yr protection plan. I also think their stores do well, because when I "switched" I tried most of the stuff I did on my PC to see if it would work well on the showroom computer, and if I felt like I could enjoy using it. I think a lot of "switchers" are there to try-before-they-buy, where ordering a PC from a PC manufactuer is going to be almost identical to what you have, as you either know what specs you need or have talked to someone about it or maybe even have a price in your head and get whatever you can for it.
While all good, I shop at the apple store because everything is out in the open. A lot of the big-box stores have stuff behind glass and I have to find an employee to get it, which sucks in a hurry. I've also had good experiences at the store in that they haven't tried to "upsell" and while I played ignorant while shopping there, after telling them when I planned on doing with it, they recommended the standard MacBook, and I decided on the Pro model because it didn't use shared video ram or integrated graphics.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
I never knew there was such a thing as Queernadians.