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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)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Another way to look at it is "their VAR and retailer friends" were killing Apple. The Apple-specialist retailers were almost uniformly horrible in terms of customer service - think Comic Book Guy meets shady mechanic. The big retailers were indifferent at best - except for some abortive efforts with CompUSA there were no Apple 'boots on the ground' to explain to customers why the Mac was worth the price premium over the Packard Bell sitting next to it.
The only reasonable way to buy Apple gear and accessories back then was mail-order, and it was back to the Comic Book Guy if you needed support.
I think Apple's retail strategy has been integral to their resurgence.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Errr... the author simply said that the policy gave the stores the feel of a community center, not that anyone was claiming that the stores were in fact community centers. You may calm down now.
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.
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
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.
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
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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.
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