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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.
At least Chuck E. Cheese lets the parents get a pitcher to ease the pain of the entire experience.
Microsoft better do the same.
"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.
My understanding is that video, Microsoft iPod parody, was made by Microsoft employees who were annoyed at the way Microsoft operates.
No, Melissa, he's upgraded to a whole new architecture. Wait till you see the UAC on this one.
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.
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.
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.