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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)."
'Cause I'd really like to throw a chair at a Google logo.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Forged of eight Geniuses.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/20/
"...noting that you'll even be able to pay to celebrate your birthday there."
Will it include, complementary, one or two members of the Vista dev team that decided to break the reasonably good UI in Windows XP? Or one of the Office guys that thought getting rid of menus would be a great idea?
Because then I'd pay to have my birthday party there.
Oh, yes.
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).
b) I wonder if they'd object if I stood outside and handed out Ubuntu CD's?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday dear
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No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
the Task Bar.
Their Apple envy will be the death of this store idea. One of the huge differences between MS and Apple is that peole don't use MS products because they love them, they use them because they feel they have no choice . Apple users strive to own Apples, while MS users largely resent MS.
Caveat Utilitor
At least Chuck E. Cheese lets the parents get a pitcher to ease the pain of the entire experience.
Microsoft better do the same.
While Sony isn't very popular on slashdot for obvious reasons, they have some kind of rock solid customer base who keeps buying/upgrading their products.
Used (in fact, restored) a Sony Vaio high end laptop for 2 days, I ended up telling its owner "This thing tries to be Apple but the operating system (Windows) kills the experience". I mean they are really unique in terms of EFI etc.
MS is a general operating system vendor. There is no "Vista Air" to show there.
I can tell what they should stock. Input Devices, lots and lots of them, all models and they should allow people to try them physically.
Also if they will show laptops (which will make excluded partners mad), a tip from me: Use your own products (update services) to make them turn on 08 AM, install all updates, shut down or sleep until shop opens. All without "status windows" which you love. Staring at 20 laptops having that yellow "critical updates available" is really absurd. Hope some computer shops read this. Add "Wireless signal low" and you have complete "don't buy me, I will really fsck up your life" product display.
They don't even think about a shop edition of Windows right? A basic CD could do all the things I said above. While I don't have that MSCE thing, I can do it myself.
What's sad about Microsoft is that they've long stopped innovating... if they ever did.
The Microsoft Store is a ripoff of the Apple Store.
The Zune is a ripoff of the iPod (or a turd... I'm not sure).
Bing and Live before is a ripoff of Google.
They don't create anything any more. They just copy others and wonder why it doesn't work. (Indeed copying others and doing enough versions seemed to work for them. It just doesn't work any longer.)
Even Windows is a ripoff of Windows, and since XP that's been on a downward trend as more apps more to the web. They killed off Windows as a gaming platform with their idiot decision to restrict DirectX10 to Vista. Vista. Vista. Vista....
(Bill Gates wakes up in a cold sweat. "Oh Melissa I've had the most horrible dream...")
"I see that you're trying to celebrate a birthday. Would you like help with tha--aARAGGGHHH!"
Another satisfied customer discovers the joy of killing Clippy for his/her birthday.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Menus are so 2006, what to order is now printed on the ribbon they wrap the presents with.
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.
My parents took me and some friends to Six Flags on my birthday and we rode roller coasters and ate junk food and blasted each other with water cannons and laughed ourselves silly. But if only there had been a Microsoft Store in my day...
Clearly I was born two decades too early. I feel gypped. Today's kids have no idea how lucky they are.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Windows 7? Office? and some mice/keyboards?
I don't understand the point? Is there any big product line I am missing, that people actually buy?
As far as I understand it, MS lives from big corporate mass-license sales for Windows and Office. And everything other is pretty much irrelevant.
Sounds to me like the Zune of stores. Something that really nobody cares about, because it's just a knockoff saying "I wanna be just as cool as Apple" (note the "wanna", which is not a "am", and the "just as" which is not a "more" :).
I wonder when Microsoft will stop imitating and start innovating. And I guess: Only when they are forced to. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
There will be a progress indicator at the checkout, but it will vary wildly between 10 seconds and 10^23 years remaining. You'll also be accosted by store security at least 10 times on the way out to verify that your receipt is genuine.
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.
Not long ago a story ran describing a long term debt offering by MS. The story was noteworthy because it stated MS had never offered long term debt instruments. Old school investment theory, as I remember it, would characterize an MS offering of long term debt instruments as one sign of a mature company. It may be the MS brain trust sees it's revenue flattening out and wants to lock in some long term money. Moving into bricks and mortar is another story, although if they see their revenue base flattening or receding like a middle aged hair line then maybe their looking to generate new revenue from a new venue. The question arises as to the likelihood of their offering their own boxes. I'm pretty sure the margin on PC stuff is as thin as it gets but they must have a strategy in hand. Some time ago Bill Gates rather infamously prophesied that, about now, PC hardware would be free with the OS and software being the only costs. Whatever the present state of information suggests I'd expect some good old extend, embrace and extinguish action.
ideopath @ play
My understanding is that video, Microsoft iPod parody, was made by Microsoft employees who were annoyed at the way Microsoft operates.
You want to know what is fricking sad? it was all the geeky techy sites that wanted MSFT to be more like Apple, while the home users frankly didn't give a shit. While I have bought Win7 HP just to play with, showing my home and business customers Win7 the same things keep getting said over and over: "what is that? It sure ain't Windows." "If I would have wanted an Apple, I would have bought one" and "Where the hell is the button to make it look like XP? Hell where is the button to make it look like Windows 98? I'll take even Windows 98!"
Steve Ballmer, if you or any of your cronies or shills are reading this, please listen. I am going to impart some wisdom that might just keep you from going down in history as MSFT's version of the Pepsi guy that nearly killed Apple. Ready? Now listen close- A good 90% of your customers, including damned near all the home user H.A.T.E change, okay? Let me say this again: Home user fricking HATE change! All they wanted was a little faster, a little harder to screw up, and a little easier to deal with, that's all. Is that really so fricking hard to understand?
So please, for the love of all the evil at MSFT, quit trying to be Apple! You have 90% to their less than 10%! Grow some balls man! You're a fricking business OS company! You're products are SUPPOSED to be boring as shit! You screwed up the XP driver model, causing countless devices to stop working (strike one), you totally boned the GUI trying to be hip and made things that took two clicks take six (strike two) and you are overloading the GUI with bling bling that only irritates the home users trying to be a bastard stepchild of Apple Inc (strike three!). Go back to your roots and make nice boring low resource desktops again. Remember Win2K? Remember WinXP? You were good at that. What you are NOT good at is the whole "high concept" artsy fartsy stuff that makes Apple the Ferrari of computers. You're more like Ford. Boring but sell by the millions. Be happy already!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
At first, the thought of bored 6 year-olds choosing laptop options made me laugh. But then I thought about the Xbox.
When I was a kid, a party at Chuck E Cheese was like an orgy of endless video games. Today, they have a handful of old arcade cabinets and some carnival games for crappy prizes. I've been dragged there for a few birthday parties with my kids. While the 5-8 year-olds have a great time with the ball-pits and singing robots, the teens and pre-teens look like they're in hell.
A room full of 360s with wall-sized displays and high-end audio, Madden and Halo competitions for games and accessories, all you can eat pizza; it sounds like a dream come true for tween boys. Your kid could fill out a wish list of games for gifts and grab bags would have credits for the Live store. It sounds like a great idea to me.
"while MS users largely resent MS" Where the hell did you get this idea?
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The New York Times covered this story on February 13, 2009: Will Clippy Be a Greeter at Microsoft's New Stores?. One way to know that Microsoft is not doing well is to realize that the New York Times has joined the Microsoft bashers. Perhaps the amateur bashers will upgrade their skills now that the professionals have moved in.
I admire Linus Torvald's leadership, but in saying Microsoft hatred is a Disease, he seems to be more and more alone. It's not really hatred, it is dislike, and dislike of Microsoft is becoming widespread. I'm not sure what Torvald's intention was in saying that, but of course the actual social effect is the opposite of what he is overtly saying. The actual effect is something like, "The dislike of Microsoft is becoming so widespread and intense that it is like an epidemic."
Microsoft hired this man to be the head of retail sales: Microsoft Appoints David Porter as Corporate Vice President of Retail Stores. Note in the upper right hand corner of that article, under "Press Resources", that Waggener Edstrom is still Microsoft's public relations agency. That's interesting, since Pam Edstrom's daughter, Jennifer Edstrom, wrote Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, published in 1998, with a former Microsoft manager. Quote from the first Amazon review in the list of reviews: "The authors are evidently very anti-Microsoft, yet at the same time their stories come across not so much as how stupid Microsoft is, but how mismanaged and lucky Gates & Company have been, which is closer to the truth than many people think."
What do you think of Microsoft's new vice-president? Looking at his photo, is he the kind of person who can make retail stores that people admire? He doesn't know how to tie his tie. Can he make stores look good?
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.
Better than the linux store, where you have to build the whole store yourself. If you don't like the pot holes in the parking area, they say you can fix them yourself.
GNU Store party - You need to bring an equal amount of cake and party favors for everyone (but triple portions for RMS, who comes and sings the Free Software Song for you and a collection of Spanish-language folk songs). Gifts can only be exchanged if you agree to re-gift on the same terms by which you received the gift yourself.
Gentoo Linux Store party - You arrive at the site where the store should be, and get handed a box of tools and building materials. You miss your party and spend the next year building the store by hand with your party guests, only to find out you don't have compatible windows, doors, or toilets. The store staff assures you these are under development and should be buildable by your next birthday party.
OpenBSD Store party - You drive to the store, and security doesn't let you in.
Ubuntu Linux Store party - You arrive and are welcomed by lavishly decorated and friendly African tribesmen. The staff of the Debian store across the street glares the entire time, disgustedly.
ReactOS Store party - It looks similar to the Microsoft Store party, but comes with all the "perks" of the GNU Store party.
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...
A successful antitrust suit is a pretty good indication that people are not using a company's product though choice.
No. It's a pretty good indication that the government thinks a company is getting too big for its britches.
At least *read* the article you link to. A settlement is not the definition of a successful suit.
People file class-actions to make companies own up to their mistakes. Governments file antitrust to protect competitive commerce.
Here's a quote cited in the very Wiki article you linked: "Consumers did not ask for these antitrust actions - rival business firms did."
The DOJ suit was about the browser wars. It wasn't about OS/2 or OS9 or Office. It was about letting grannies install Netscape v4.79, and the upshot was all us web coders had to test pissy rendering quirks for an extra couple of years and keep using table layouts. The same was true for IE5 for OSX, thank god they let that die.
From Windows 95 through 2000, which we can now remember fondly, I installed web browsers literally hundreds of times on dozens of machines. From Mosaic to Netscape Gold to Opera, not once did Windows make that process at all inconvenient for me. It took a while, but the browser teams finally realized that browsers weren't something users should have to purchase, and that offering a better feature set was the best way to be competitive.
The real winner here is modern day open source, which removes the potential for corporations to outright buy competing products. My only genuine, non-bandwagon complaint about Microsoft is that it's products are so minimalist out of the box. There's always something missing. This is partly an effect of the antitrust concerns, and succeeds in creating an aftermarket for every product they have. I'm fine with using Microsoft products, I'm just sick of tinkering with them. Spending time looking for more choices and new features is damn annoying!
Now and ultimately, Microsoft will lag behind the curve with its application and OS development, because of its lumbering size, disparate teams, and categorical imperative to protect it's intellectual property; while always succeeding as an enterprise solution thanks to its immense level of tech support and training. Having the government make it lean-and-mean won't actually improve its products or our experiences/respect, and once the government thinks Google's britches are getting tight (and a wee bit evil), I expect we'll see the same things all over again.
No, but you do get to choose between Windows Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional , Enterprise, Ultimate, Server Standard, Server Standard without Hyper-V, Enterprise Server, Enterprise Server without Hyper-v, Data Centre, Data Centre without Hyper-V, HPC Server, Foundation Server, Web Server, Small Business Server, Small Business Server Premium, Essential Business Server, Essential Business Server Premium, Embedded, Mobile or Smartphone.
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.