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Celebrate Your Next Birthday At the Microsoft Store
theodp writes "Chuck E. Cheese, meet Bill H. Gates. A leaked PowerPoint posted at Gizmodo provides a glimpse of what Microsoft's retail shops may look like, noting that you'll even be able to pay to celebrate your birthday there. Some of the stores that were profiled for ideas were Nike, Nokia, Sony, Apple, and AT&T. Microsoft's take on the Genius Bar is the Answers Bar (aka Guru Bar, Windows Bar)."
I think Microsoft's new campaign of "personalization" is worthwhile, especially as a way to counter the "hipness" of Apple. With Apple you get popularity, but there's no uniqueness. Microsoft gave up on popularity, hipness after the failed Bill Gates/Seinfeld "quirky" commercials. Uniqueness and customization is a good strategy, I think. The "I'm a PC" commercials pushed it and the stores, as per the article, are making it a big focus.
I don't really have any need to buy Microsoft products, but it's certainly interesting. It's new at least, and I think it has a shot at succeeding. Plus, having real people to talk to is a step towards making it easier to use a valid, purchased product than a pirated product, which is step 1 in fighting piracy (the real way).
Dear God in heaven, have these guys *ever* had an original thought? I mean an original though that was good, of course.
Apple pulls it off because they've got flash, Nike pulls it off because they've got the same thing Apple has.
Flash helps, but I don't think that's the main reason why it works for Apple.
Apple can pull it off because:
They sell hardware. Mac Mini, iMac, Mac Pro, MacBook, iPod/iPhone...
People walk in, try all the models, and if they buy something they know exactly what they're getting.
Microsoft sells^Wlicenses software.
What the customer demos at the store isn't what they take home with them. That little box doesn't contain the obscenely powerful gaming rig that the customer played with. The only two things in the store that will perform exactly as displayed would be MS's two main hardware products: Zune and Xbox.
At the time, analysts pooh-poohed the idea of Apple's retail stores originally, too. The retail space was glutted with computers, Apple already had a relationship with CompUSA which was best described as "passive-aggressive," and Gateway's retail concept was defecating the bed. Opening a retail store was the silliest thing they could have done, except it worked for them. They weren't just marketing hardware and software, what they were doing was cashing in on the brand's exclusivity, by creating a boutique space where people could interact with the hardware and ask questions about it.
The problem with Microsoft's concept is that they don't have the same culture to sell. Apple has a niche (albeit a very deep niche) market which supports the notion of exclusiveness (which anyone can conveniently buy into). Microsoft doesn't have that kind of exclusiveness (unless you're talking about excluding people who are using previous versions of their OS on older hardware). What Microsoft will instead find they're selling is ubiquity, and not even a nice sort of ubiquity either. It's more of a fetid, horrid inevitability, not so much like death as spending the holiday with in-laws.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
What problem is MS trying to solve? The lack of coolness. As the old IBM showed so well, there is no profit to being cool on the back end. Just efficient. Unlike Apple, any MS store will compete with the other retail outlets. The best thing to have such stores will be xBox items and the like, which will compete with other stores. Perhaps they will have computers there as well, but how to choose the makes and models. Seems like if they have Compaq and HP, then everyone else will file a suite.
Honestly, it seems like it wold be better to offer any retailer the ability to build a MS support center in existing retail space. Like the current I'm a PC commercials, the entire venture seems to be desperate money spent for no apparent reason. Make the OS work. Lower prices. Get out the next xBox. This is what the people wnat.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Well, I don't think that the average Windows user actually feels like an oppressed indentured servant, like he's portrayed around these parts.
I think for most people it's just utilitarian. It's what came with the computer, it's what works, now let me on teh intarwebs already.
Basically it's not as much about the presence of a negative conotation about MS, it's more like just the absence of a positive one. Having a Windows computer or hanging around a Windows store, just doesn't carry the same illusion of somehow being hip and cool. It's just a tool to an end.
Sorta like how nobody would hang around the Bosch power tools section of Home Depot, nor carry around an electric drill to look cool.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes, Windows has market share going for them - but what else? If I could run everything I wanted to run on OSX (and on a machine that I could actually afford), I'd switch right away...
Sure, Linux netbooks were taken off the shelves in lieu of Windows-based machines - but not because the Windows experience is so great, but rather because the Linux experience was so awful. Sure, most of that's the hardware vendors' fault for not setting up their Linux distributions properly (missing drivers, etc. etc.), but all the average consumer knows is that the Windows version of the same laptop works out of the box...
But working out of the box isn't enough - that's just a prerequisite. A good operating system needs to do a lot more...
No, I'm pretty sure he'd do it simply because it'd be funny.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It makes no difference at all to the customer if it's a driver problem, an app problem or a kernel programmer had a bad day.
A successful antitrust suit is a pretty good indication that people are not using a company's product though choice.
After the break-up of the Standard Oil trust, customers went right on buying from Rockefeller's regional operating companies.
He prospered. They prospered. The small independents faded out of the picture.
The fact that government intervention failed to have any impact on Standard Oil (or AT&T, or Microsoft) does not prove that they were not coercive monopolies. Only that government intervention was ineffective.