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Microsoft 'Hut' Opens Outside Seattle Apple Store
theodp writes "On October 20th, Microsoft will open its 14th store in Seattle's popular University Village shopping center, where it will go head-to-head against an existing Apple Store. To help build buzz for next week's grand opening, Microsoft set up a temporary Kinect-equipped hut within spitting distance of the Apple store, a guerrilla marketing effort designed to catch the attention of the throngs flocking to the Apple Store for the new iPhone 4S. Microsoft will up the marketing ante for next weekend's grand opening, transforming the parking lot between the two stores into a concert venue for performances by The Black Keys and OneRepublic. Any bets on whether the concerts will drum up more business for the Zune Market Place or the iTunes Store?"
Maybe it would be best in consideration of the season and in light of current events for Microsoft's marketing department to reprise this popular event from the launch of Windows Phone.
The free concert series was a big hit for WP7 - it drew big crowds.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Spitting distance? Ballmer must have selected the location.
John
this popular event
Help stamp out iliturcy.
that would be 'chair-throwing distance'. not spit.
Read radical news here
On October 20th, Microsoft will open its 14th store in Seattle's popular University Village shopping center...
Why do they need 14 stores in one shopping center?
More like more business for BT: Hey these guys have a log of good songs. I think I'll grab their whole discography.
buthurt much? who the fuck cares, its not like this one store is going to break MS or Apple.
And by hundreds of miles behind apple, do you mean in the shiny object hipster yuppie market? Because the majority of the real world seems to show otherwise.
wtf
And by hundreds of miles behind apple, do you mean in the shiny object hipster yuppie market? Because the majority of the real world seems to show otherwise.
I consider it very humorous on how when something is not in their realm of refinement/etc then it's suddently "hipster" or "yuppie".
The majority of the real world (as opposed to the fake world... wtf?) buys the cheapest shit they can get their hands on without regard to any side effects or lifespan concerns. There are a percentage that want something else.
Which dovetails nicely into our current conversation. Thanks, please continue.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
And xbox live is governed by corporate pigs.
And nothing Apple does is governed by corporate pigs?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I find it particularly interesting that their choice of performers is OneRepublic and The Black Keys. It's particularly odd because The Black Keys have some of the strongest independent credentials out there. They've been consistently published by independent labels and have really carved out their own musical niche by themselves. The idea that they're playing a concert for Microsoft is a bit... odd. I don't particularly care, however. If I was in the area I would be one of the first there for the show.
I like losing arguments, it just means that I can take your point and make it my own.
But Brick & Mortar stores can't possibly compete against the internet!!
I was at the Apple Store at University Village last night. It's so crowded they have a line just inside the door to match you to an associate because the ratio of customers to help was so out of whack. The MS store was draped but is directly across a small parking lot facing the Apple store. This is Seattle and the kind of people that go to see the Black Keys are not MS buyers. BUT...I'll bet big money the email goes out to every MS employee on their campus that it's their corporate responsibility to flood the place on opening weekend.
I've also worked on building several Microsoft stores throughout the country and they're kind of pathetic in their copying. All built within site of an Apple store and just have darker wood and a giant video wall. Even the uniforms are a carbon copoy. Kinda desperate move on MS's part. Plus, no way can their income pay for the sq footage of their stores. Money down a hole just to (fake) show they can keep up with Apple. The whole effort is so disingenuous.
Microsoft can have a store at every corner of every street in the world and I'd still avoid them like the plague.
I lost respect for them completely in 1997 (cratered by their previous blunders), so it'd be on par with walking into Walmart.
In fact, both have the same feel.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Sure, Kinect is going to make iPhone users want to buy a WP7-based phone...
Very convenent
I live in Seattle and many tech people I've talked agree that MS' biggest problem is the person at the top - Steve Ballmer. He has no vision whatsoever and at best is a chief operating officer. Not only Ballmer, but also the bureaucracy at Microsoft is one of the biggest problems for them. That's documented on the Mini Microsoft blog
Well played, MS.
Some people might actually watch Microsoft products -- if the line for the iPhone 4S is big enough, that is...
"monkey jump distance" ? developers sure know the exact measure of that one.
Read radical news here
Microsoft isn't usually associated with tangible objects. It's a second-thought to people when getting devices and computers whether it runs Microsoft or not. (Fx, people will get a Dell, a HP, a Toshiba... Not a "Microsoft computer"... ) So I'm trying to understand what's motivating that business model...
my best guess is they are going to be selling a bunch of different vendors products for them. If it does take off, it means device makers can rely on MS as a distribution channel of sorts. (At the very least, MS seems to suggest they will get the word out about those products.) That'd be a really good incentive for those companies to create a solid line of Windows branded stuff.
And xbox live is governed by corporate pigs.
And nothing Apple does is governed by corporate pigs?
Nope. Apple is governed by hipster hogs.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
which one have you never been in, again?
Microsoft's had a Kinect hut set up on Red Square at the University of Washington for several weeks (since the week before school began). It's been popular - not "waiting in line" popular, but there's always someone playing in there. Well, hold on, there are 35,000 students at UW so maybe it's not all that popular...
In any case, I'm sure they'll get good attendance at the Kinect hut; and if they're selling games in the Microsoft Store I'm sure a goodly number of people will be in there looking. From what I've seen and heard, though, it's unlikely there'll be much crossover success with regards to Windows computers. I know several Mac users who own XBox 360s, but I've never heard any of them say "you know, I think I'll try Windows again because my gaming console is just so great!" People compartmentalize their technology. Most of the Windows admins I know own iPhones (seriously, none of them own an Android or a Windows Mobile phone) - and I've never heard any of them say "I like my phone so much, I think I'll buy a Mac!"
I'm sure a lot of customers will stop by on the way, listen to some music, maybe play a game... and then go on into the Apple Store.
#DeleteChrome
this just proves that Microsoft doesn't get it. For all there R&D dollars and for all their marketing dollars, piggybacking off of Apple places them in a poor light, a "hey look, we are relevant too" kinda light. Apart from the OS space and the occasional Windows phone, Microsoft and Apple are no longer the direct competitors they once were.
"The company has set up a temporary hut within spitting distance of the Apple store. "
And you couldn't get one photo showing how close the "hut" is to the Apple store? All I see in your photo is a white cargo box in a parking lot. That photo could have been taken anywhere on the planet. If your entire story is going to be able how incredibly close a Microsoft store/hut is to a Apple store *at least* have photos to back up your claim.
And the photos you do have are beautiful. One photo shows the Microsoft Store (that's the name on the outside of the hut) with two dark figures inside. The other photo is inside the store but it's practically a thumbnail with a resolution of 225x171. Seriously? 1998 called, it wants it's crappy photos back.
So not only did you not take a photo proving the Microsoft "Store" is within spitting distance of the Apple store, you couldn't take one decent photo of what *was* there. All kinds of fail is going on here.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
MS hasn't innovated in 20 years.
Windows Phone seems to have quite a bit of innovation in it, probably the most innovation since iPhone was launched (Android is just a copycat of that, sorry Android fans[1]). So they're not completely dead yet.
[1] Android has some pros and cons compared to iOS, e.g. being some bits being opens ource, it's less locked down, using Java rather than Objective C for development and support of a wide range of hardware in various niches rather than just one high end set per year.
Pizza Hut needs to sue their pants off.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Microsoft is not a "cool" brand. It's the brand that people are forced to use in the office because Microsoft has essentially left no choice. This is not a good reason to buy Microsoft.
But MS does have a cool brand that it controls. It has XBox. It's even managed to give Kinect its own identity. Windows phone 7 may not be able to hook onto those, but Microsoft can create a brand. Relying on the existing brand doesn't make sense if they want to appeal to the trendsetters.
Because "Microsoft ghetto" was judged to be too uncomfortably close to the truth.
You're right, that one store won't break MS or Apple. Microsoft is breaking themselves and cheap stunts don't help.
As for not understanding the 100s of miles between them, those are the words of a bitter, clueless fossil. Reading a bunch of your past posts didn't disappoint me. Dismissing Apple's ability to release products people actually want as the "shiny object hipster yuppie market" puts you squarely in denial. Half of new Macs are sold to people sick to death of Windows. The "real world", as it was, has been burning down for a decade and the fact that Apple is what Microsoft wants to be really rubs you the wrong way. That's ok, you'll be obsolete sooner than you realize, although Apple has demonstrated they're perfectly capable of fucking it up all by themselves.
There's a post in the Seattle PI's "Microsoft Blog" that shows the location for the actual store - it is indeed right across the parking lot from the Apple Store.
I can understand why Microsoft would want to do that, I guess, in terms of symbolism - but I think it's a terrible business mistake. Whatever you think of Microsoft and their products, you can't believe they've got the same cachet that Apple does. People aren't going to be hunting them out - but MS has picked a spot with seriously bad visibility from most of the mall. University Village isn't a big enclosed mall - it's an open-air space where most of the shops are scattered among smaller buildings that open straight onto parking lots. The Apple Store is on a side lot that's set back somewhat, but it at least is visible as people are driving through the lot from the 25th Avenue entrance (plus people are going to be looking for them anyway). Someone coming from that entrance and driving straight in won't even see the Microsoft Store - as they pass that side lot, the MS Store will be behind their left shoulder while the Apple Store will be in front of them.
#DeleteChrome
You neglected to mention that you will find products from Apple partners in the Apple store as well, not just those branded by Apple (I mean, is anything really *made* by Apple, discuss). And yes, an Apple store is an experience. I'd imagine an MS store would be less interesting, and more creepy.
Just as BurgerKIng uses McDonalds site planning and places stores near them, so Microsoft falls into the same seemingly profitable pattern. Hey! Yes Hey! Microsoft! Isn't McDonalds Bigger than Burger King??? Ever hear of first mover advantage? It applies to real estate too. If they liked your location they'd be there.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Windows 7 still takes 3 hours to install anything.
One thing I feel compelled to say in defense of Win7 is that the OS itself doesn't take long to install. There was me expecting to be sitting in front of the PC for two hours, merrily clicking "accept" buttons and selecting options from drop down boxes, only to discover that I'd barely even started my second coffee when the install finished. It was so freaky.
I don't know .Net has some pretty cool stuff in it. Most of it lived in labs beforehand but there is a lot of lab projects moving into the mainstream via .Net, generics, LINQ, lamdas, Task Parrallel Library etc. Do other languages have this stuff, probably. Who was first? Not sure but if not quite cutting edge innovation it is at least a quick pace of incorporating innovation into products. Similar to Win Vista/7 "cloning of OS X who cares, can you OS do what I want it to for a price I'm willing to pay (even if it is as a MS tax on the purchase of new hardware)? Yep. Okay you get my money.Visual Studio IMHO is the best IDE hands down, and the whole package (TFS) seems like it would be really useful for large dev teams though I'm usually a sole or very small number of developers kind of projects so never used it. I'm yet to see anything that comes close.
P.S. I actually really like the snap to side and snap to top GUI feature in Win 7. That to me made Win 7 beat Snow Leopard in usability IMHO and I'm running a 27" iMac. Drives me nuts when developing in Mac OS that I constantly have to fidget with windows to look at things side by side. Windows? Drag left drag right done. Maybe not "wow" technology but MS rarely does that. It usually does things either very productive or at least productive enough to keep people coming back. Since the Lion upgrade I find my computer runs half as fast as it did under Snow Leopard and much slower than under Win 7. I haven't been back to OS X since other than occasionally to run updates and see if it works better for a few hours. So Apple screws up too but they are always trying to be the second coming. MS is just trying to push out okay to great, Mac tries to always push "wow this is new" (which usually means wait till service pack 2 just like a MS product :-)).
Since when is single-digit marketshare considered "dominant"?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I know, right?
Anyway, the people coming out of the Apple store probably already own Apple's far superior game system and would never buy an XBox360 and a Kinect.
Oh wait...
You are welcome on my lawn.
MS hasn't innovated in 20 years.
Windows Phone seems to have quite a bit of innovation in it, probably the most innovation since iPhone was launched (Android is just a copycat of that, sorry Android fans[1]). So they're not completely dead yet.
If they keep up that kind of innovation, they will eventually run out of money (and customers). It may be "innovative" but nobody cares, which is a different kind of innovation to what Apple is known for. Re: Android don't forget voice actions first, over the air updates first, multi-tasking first (no?), and being much more open with the entire apps process (apps allowed, side loading, etc).
Hey little kiddies get on my App guess who's back with a brand new Shrink Rap? :-) People tend to group things/themselves together based on what makes them different from the norm That is way the early Nazi movement happened in bars of like minded crazies, if a city has 100 Jamaicans there will be a little Caribbean etc. Apple has the advantage here because they are the "others". Which really isn't true now because I'd suspect the majority of households in the west have at least one Apple product. But it is still perceived as different. MS is perceived as normal, "I already understand this", or even worse "that is the stuff I work on all day why would I care about it when I go home?" Apple except in some niches, mainly the cool ones creatives, science, etc, has stayed away from the office. It makes it a lot easier to convince people they are cool gadgets you go spend your own time and money on. Very few people get wood for a spreadsheet :-)
There is also a Microsoft store directly across from an Apple store in Mall of America. Based on the few items I checked prices on, they are not making money from people who price compare. They had the exact brand and model of a 16GB USB flash stick for almost three times what I paid for it.
Because MS doesn't sell PCs they do at least have a lot of hardware from partners but half the problem is it costs more than in most other stores from what I've read so they're not competitive where as if you go to an Apple store it's the same prices as anywhere else admittedly that will mainly be because there are very few options for buying a Mac.
Based on what Microsoft has that it can sell to consumers, they'd be a lot smarter to locate near a GameStop than an Apple store. They XBox line is really all that they have to sell directly to consumers.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
No, the author isn't wrong at all, he's just unwittingly exposed one of the flaws of the English language...
This is not a flaw in the English language - it is quite easy to accurately communicate the information. For example: "Microsoft has 13 retail stores in the US and will open its fourteenth on 20th October in Seattle's popular University Village shopping center, where...". If you choose to write ambiguously it is not a flaw in the language but a flaw in the author.
Windows 7 is good (whatever Mac OS X/LINUX people, it's great for gaming)
Windows 7 is only good for gaming because they've been pushing DirectX for so long, and refined it for so long, and pushed game developers into using it, that it's the de facto standard for 3D gaming, and of course since it's proprietary and only supported on Windows, that means Windows is the best (3D, FPS, etc.) gaming platform out there. (Of course, there's other kinds of gaming out there now, as the iPhone/Android games have shown, but that's beside the point.) If MS wanted to make Linux into a great gaming platform, it'd be pretty trivial for them to port DirectX to Linux; obviously they wouldn't do that, but the point is that it isn't Windows 7 that's so great for gaming, just one of its components that predates Windows 7 by a long time.
Windows 7, in fact, isn't innovative in any way at all; it's just a warmed-over version of Vista with a lot of bugs and problems fixed, and a few minor cosmetic changes to the UI.
Arguably one could give MS a point for the XBox360.
No innovation there (except for the Kinect recently). That was just a cheap copy of the Playstation series. Like lots of their other ventures, they saw some market they wanted to dominate, so they made a cheap copy of the top player in that market, put it out there, and then kept refining it and pouring more money into it until the competitors ran out of steam and they could become dominant themselves. But at what cost? Has their Xbox division ever been profitable?
I live in Seattle and many tech people I've talked agree that MS' biggest problem is the person at the top - Steve Ballmer. He has no vision whatsoever and at best is a chief operating officer.
I agree with that being their biggest problem. The board needs to toss him out. However, his best job would be as a used car salesman, not a COO.
Ballmer can't even hire someone to find new locations for retail fronts... so what does he do, he opens stores by Apple's . Microsoft erected a big(ger) store just a few doors down from Apple's in one of the malls in the Seattle area (Bellevue Square). MS couldn't even pick some other part of the mall, it had to be close to Apple's.
Here in AZ, MS actually beat Apple in the store selection game, I think (maybe someone who disagrees can point out why Apple's selection is better). The Apple store is in the Chandler mall, which is a pretty "normal" mall with Macy's, Dillard's, Sears, and Nordstrom as its anchor stores. MS never did open a shop there; instead, they got a rather nice location in the Scottsdale mall, which is an "upscale" mall with Nieman-Marcus and Barney's as two of its anchors (Macy's, Dillard's, and Nordstrom are the other three; definitely no Sears to be found there), and which also has a lot of overpriced designer stores like Coach, Touraneau (sells expensive watches like Breitling and Rolex), etc. The MS store is actually a very short walk from the Coach store. So for whatever reasons, MS picked the ritzy-ish mall, while Apple (which was there first) chose the more pedestrian mall. Apple has another store I'm aware of here in AZ, but it's way up in north Scottsdale in some crappy strip-mall, not really an exclusive location by any means, and actually right across the street from a Walmart and Sam's Club.
Microsoft employs some of the brightest minds in the industry, just look at the amazing work done by Microsoft Research, it just seems to be unable to monetize and/or properly market its innovations which makes them seem reactive instead of leading. XBox, Windows Phone and Zune are excellent products in their own merits but they way Microsoft markets them make them seem as if they are copying the market leader. They also fail to stick to their products and lack a consistent strategy, they quit on Zune why too soon and then there is their development platforms and technologies .net, Silverlight, Win32, WPF and now they are moving to HTML5 and JavaScript.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
But perfectly in keeping with the Microsoft's definition of "innovation".
I love The Black Keys. They are awesome.
But this smells like selling out.
I've been looking forward to their new record.
Now I'm afraid I'll keep seeing that fucking Windows logo in my mind's eye whenever I hear it.
Shit...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Should just get a room.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Amorous couples can go check out the latest Zune and squirt each other.
By corporate world, are you going outside the American borders or staying within them? (No snark intended or implied - genuine question)
'tis but a scratch.
Has their Xbox division ever been profitable?
Do you mean, recouping all the early investments? If so, then no, not yet.
Or do you mean yearly balance? If so, then it has been profitable for several years now.
..for Microsoft. 'nuff said.
...has an Apple store and a Microsoft store very nearly across the same hallway from each other.
I can't stand the Mall of America but on every compulsory trip I've taken there, the Microsoft store is nearly empty. A few people (my 7 year old included) are goofing with a Kinect up front, a few losers are using the demo PCs for Facebook updates and that's it.
The Apple store on the other side of the hallway is packed, with nary a demo iPad or Mac unattended. Lots of people in the store.
In neither case did I count who walked out with stuff, but the interest level in the Apple store was high.
I thought the Microsoft store was generally attractive, but the whole idea seems unfocused. There's Microsoft products like Xbox and Zune (well, not anymore), the phone and then there's...PCs. Laptops, desktops, but they're not really selling them, well, maybe they are. You can't tell.
It felt like they were pushing the whole PC "experience" and not just the Microsoft vision of it, which even Microsoft didn't seem they could explain very well.
For full disclosure, I build my own Windows PCs but have owned more iPods and iPhones than I'd care to admit (every iPhone model from the 3G to the 4S).
I can pick up my new 27" iMac at the Apple store and go get a copy of Windows to run on Boot Camp or VMWare, all without leaving the mall. I think Microsoft has this all figured out!
Now I get to play kinect while I wait up in line for my 4GS! :D
That's for computer sales, worldwide. When you look at US stats, it's definitely double digits, and compared to other computer manufacturers individually, instead of against all Windows combined, they have a very respectable share, especially in the laptop market and non-business computing. They're also pretty much the only computer manufacturer that is growing their market share, and rather dramatically, compared to nearly all of their competitors losing ground.
For Apple's other markets, music players, phones, and tablets, they are clearly quite dominant.
You may be confused, this isn't the 90s Apple anymore.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
I don't see Java as being a positive over a lower-level, compiled language like Objective-C (It is basically C after all). You can go onto the Apple developers site and download one of the twenty open-source projects that are currently being developed as a part of iOS. The other two examples though are legitimate positives ov Android.
Apple may not have a living room console, but they've got the handheld market. Heck, Nintendo's downfall is being blamed on iOS games (and to an extent, other mobile phone games).
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
MS hasn't innovated in 20 years.
I don't agree that Microsoft hasn't innovated in 20 years. The Xbox had quite a lot that the competition lacked at the time, the Windows Phone has a rather different approach to other handset OSs & the continued development of Windows 7 and Windows 8 is has been rather different to the one Microsoft (And other PC operating systems) have traditionally taken.
MS' biggest problem is the person at the top - Steve Ballmer. He has no vision whatsoever and at best is a chief operating officer.
In all the examples I've given above, are all projects Steve Ballmer has had very little input in. As a CEO, you couldn't pick someone who was more of an unimaginative, direction-less bureaucrat and it shows from everything Microsoft did from the late 1990's until recently. I don't know what's happened in the last four years but Microsoft have really gained some direction and begun to really innovate.
The problem it seems is Microsoft is now working in the shadow of Apple in terms of the failed Zune and now the Windows Phone, that's not to say they're bad devices, but they're trying to innovate in areas where Apple dominates using a very different approach. To the point where it's given Microsoft a huge disadvantage if they want an innovative/different product to succeed.
Then again, these Microsoft stores appear to do nothing more than to follow Apple. There are advantages to how Apple handle retail, but the way in which MIcrosoft have done is appears to be nothing more than copying the competition.
Apple has done a remarkable job becoming establishment while maintaining their outsider credibility. It really comes about, I think, from their hippy origins and starting out in a garage. Heck, they flew a pirate flag outside their headquarters for the longest time (they may still, I don't know). When you've been the underdog your entire time in business, and have an anti-establishment culture within the company, that sort of reputation sticks, even when you've got the biggest market cap and everybody and their mother has an iPod.
And, let's face it, Apple has amazing marketing, and a real focus on cool things to do with your devices, not the devices themselves. When you go into an Apple Store, each area is set up for "solutions" not just a long row of computers as you find in most stores. You go to the music area, it's all about music. You go to the video area, it's all about video. You look at their TV ads, and the emphasis is never on specs, it's about usability and what you can do. It makes it a lot less nerdy, and a lot more approachable, to the average consumer. Apple is a huge company, but they have the personality of a scrappy little company that's cool to associate with. People want to Think Different even when everybody else is too. It's remarkable how Apple has gotten the best of both worlds and no doubt business schools will be talking about it for a long time.
We'll see how well it lasts without Steve Jobs, I guess, but I think they'll keep it going. Steve Jobs set up "Apple University" to indoctrinate employees in the culture, and certainly the team he assembled under him during his tenure as CEO are true believers.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Absolutely. Clearly the serious gamers have given up on Modern Warfare 3 and Gears of War and have moved to Angry Birds.
It's revolutionary!!
Seriously, is it really impossible for an Apple fan to admit that there's one thing that Apple does not do better than Microsoft. So much so that they won't even recognize that playing a game on an XBox360 and high definition TV and surround sound system is maybe a slightly better experience than playing the same game on an iPhone? Or even admit that you cannot play Gears of War or Modern Warfare 3 on the iPhone?
I can hear it already..."Yeah? Yeah? Well, Apple sold more iPhones than Microsoft sold XBox360s so clearly that means Apple is superior in every way. And you can't make a call with your XBox, so that means iPhone is a superior gaming platform."
Hey, I'm getting good at this...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Take a few gallons of kerocene to the 'Hut'.
Spalsh'm up.
Toss a match.
Problem solved.
Ah huuu ahaa ahuuu .... Hrrrr hr rhr Hyrrr hr hrrrr.
Dude.
Homes of the frm and current CEO on Google Maps.
Adds:
Kerocene.
Cennsna 150.
Bick lighters and Vodka.
Shooters in the trees.
Ah huyuy ahryuy huyu .... Hrrrr hr hr Hrrrrr hyrrr hr Hyarrr hr rh hrrr.
What I find funny is Apple is usually associated with liberals and the stereotype is liberals are all about charity and causes. Anyways Apple is notoriously stingy when it comes to charity meanwhile Bill Gates has given away the majority of his wealth.
The premise of this article is that Microsoft is putting a store right in Apple's face. Microsoft's first store is in the Bellevue Square mall less than 100 feet from the Apple store, so this is nothing new.
I stop in both stores often to check out the latest. There are some intersting things in the Microsoft store. My iPhone 4 web browser gets very sluggish when displaying complex web pages (mmo champion specifically), as did my three Android phones (AT&T N1, Verizon Droid, Verizon Droid-X). The windows phone is much faster in this regard and quite easy to use. I havent played with enough to determine if it's as usable as an iPhone yet but it is in the same ballpark.
Elsewhere in the store Microsoft has touch screen systems for people to play with, XBox with Kinect, and the commercial Surface device (a 36" multi user touch screen thing marketed at bars). Comparing the two stores Microsoft is more inviting and is way more fun. They're beating Apple here in both product lineup and in the store's handling of customers.
Over the last many years Apple has completely humiliated Microsoft in the consumer market: The ubiquity of the iDevices and coming from behind to overtake Microsoft in market cap. You can see by comparing the two stores that's still happening: Apple's store is packed, Microsoft's is not. But looking at the product lineup, staff attitude, and the improving usability of their products I dont think Apple is leading on merit any longer.
It appears to me Microsoft has figured out what it takes to compete and is giving it the college try. They may still lose despite their merit because of market acceptance or some issues I'm not seeing. I am very curious to see how this will unfold. I do sincerely hope that they do well enough to cause some feirce competition, it would be good for us as consumers.
So for whatever reasons, MS picked the ritzy-ish mall, while Apple (which was there first) chose the more pedestrian mall.
Sell to the masses, live with the classes.
Remember that Apple's head of retail came from Target.
I'm not arguing with you. I myself do far, far more gaming on my 360 than my iPhone, and there's no serious games on the iPhone (that I can think of). But you make it sound like Apple and Microsoft are going head to head in gaming, and they are not at all. Each has their preferred market, and are doing okay in their niches. The casual market seems to be a bigger one, though, which is why the Wii kicked the 360's ass and the PS3 is limping in third.
The gggp was talking about Microsoft being behind Apple in a lot of ways, but you can't compare the two companies between markets that the other one is not trying to compete it at all. That's comparing Apples and, uh, Microsofts. His statement refers to markets where Microsoft is following Apple (which is sort of the point of TFA), not markets in which they are no competing with each other.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Soooo offtopic, and a bit misinformed. The widely-cited ending of Apple's charity program when Steve Jobs returned as CEO was because the company was going under and couldn't afford it anymore. Since they've become profitable, they've done a lot more. Apple's participated in Product Red quite heavily with their iPod lines. Steve Jobs is widely believed to have given a lot of money to cancer research before he died, but simply chose to do so anonymously so we can't be entirely sure. There may have been quite a bit of other philanthropic efforts done that we won't know about because Steve Jobs was a very private person, and nobody cares enough about the other executives there to actually find out about their charitable donations but that's not proof they haven't given anything either.
I actually find it a lot more obnoxious when these rich guys give their money away so publicly. I was raised to give to charity and not make such a big deal out of it, because then you're doing it for the right reasons, and not praise. When you are a billionaire, giving away money is literally the easiest thing you can do. You won't miss it. Let me know when Bill Gates gives up his entire net worth, leaves nothing for his family, and lives as a pauper. Then I'll consider him a saint. Until then, I'm a lot more impressed by the person making minimum wage dropping some dollar bills in the charity bucket and not telling all their friends and the media about it.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
> generics, LINQ, lamdas, Task Parrallel Library etc. Do other languages have this stuff, probably
Aw, you made all the Lisp fans weep again...
That's not my point at all. This was a discussion about the Kinect and gaming and Microsoft trying to market the Kinect and Xbox360 to Apple customers. The person to whom I responded made the point that Apple was superior in every way to Microsoft so why would any Apple user be interested in a Kinect? and I called BS.
No, he did not say "in a lot of ways". He said "superior" ( I think the exact quote, in a discussion of the Kinect and gaming hardware, that Apple was "miles ahead of Microsoft") and when you're talking about gaming hardware to suggest that Apple is superior is just fanboy silliness.
Don't you agree?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I agree offtopic but I do find it interesting that Apple kept all the liberal cool without a whole lot of liberal policies like charities, work life balance perks (at least in their early days not sure about now), etc. where as MS probably the closest to "big corp" you get in tech had its founder quite his day job, give away half his net worth and go work feeding/curing sick kids full time. I guess it shows people/orgs can't be easily pigeonholed.
People want to see Win8/Metro - it will be the same UI across all MS stuff backed by the cloud. It will be interesting to see it all tied together in one place.
I was raised to give to charity and not make such a big deal out of it, because then you're doing it for the right reasons, and not praise.
Well to be fair with Bill, he publicized his donations and created his charity in an effort to get other billionaires / millionaires to also donate. And it worked - many did.
"Gosh, that mouth of your never stops flapping."
least I am not a little pussy AC
Oh - excuse me. I thought the discussion here was centered on the mobile market. I must have missed something. Yes, Win7 installs fairly quickly on a desktop. You win that point. Now - let's look at the scoreboard. Oh. Wait. No point, because the desktop isn't in this competition at all!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
one could argue when Apple was within inches of deaths door people said the same thing about the cheap stunts of apple stores
half of mac's? HA so what the fuck is that 0.5% of all PC sales? (keeping in mind apple's current status includes their gadgets and not actual computers)
oh an here we go with some hippy nonsense of the world is dead blah blah blah, I would beleive the notion that apple is what microsoft wants to be, that is if apple has not spent the first 30 years busting their ass to get where MS already was with limited to no success, and therefore turned into a gadget company.
The only point we agree on is apple is perfectly fine shooting themselves in their own ass, they did it with jobs, they did it without jobs and its just a matter of very little time before they go doing it again. I cant wait until each store has unique models of iCrap making it impossible to tell if your getting fucked over or not like the performa days.
I recommend Fran's Chocolates, on the other opposite side of the parking lot from the Apple Store. No error messages, no updates, no compatibility issues.
Didn't MS kill off the Zune?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Apple is a liberal company? You better tell Rush Limbaugh.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
No innovation there (except for the Kinect recently). That was just a cheap copy of the Playstation series. Like lots of their other ventures, they saw some market they wanted to dominate, so they made a cheap copy of the top player in that market, put it out there, and then kept refining it and pouring more money into it until the competitors ran out of steam and they could become dominant themselves.
Actually, it wasn't considering that the XBox was the first console to introduce the progammable shader pipeline -- which was a huge game-changer for consoles when it came out. Before that, any changes to the way your 3D scene was rendered required involvement of the CPU, which is relatively expensive compared to having the video card handle those calculations. But, I have to hand it to Microsoft in how they have handled DX up to this point since most of the additions to the D3D feature set tend to be a year before OpenGL has them (at least the big ones like geometry shaders). MS doesn't do much right, but they do handle that well.
"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two" -- RFC 1925
Sounds like a modern version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widow's_mite
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Funny, Samsung did about the same thing (open a shop beside an Apple store in Australia. They were "selling" Galaxy S2 for 2 dollars unlocked ...
Are they even relevant anymore?
He's known it from the start, but never made any decisions based on that bias of theirs. That way, even Bill Gates was/is a Liberal, and when you go to Unix/FOSS/GNU, you have a mix - from Stallman to Raymond to McNealy. So no point making computing decisions based on the politics of the company chiefs.
I've often wondered about hanging around outside places to get customers. But I always shyed away think I might get sued or beaten off. I have to remember this story! This is a great reminder that capitalism & competition doesn't have values, so why not? Shameless!
A blog I run for the wealth
Dude you are in denial! I am a Linux user and gave up Windows. However, my family members are Apple users, and my brother has most Apple products. Frankly they work well together. Want to know why my brother is an Apple user? Because he is sick to crap about having to be an admin to copy files from one machine to another. He likes the fact that his media is available from one device to another. He likes being to watch TV with Apple TV and not have to figure out nitty gritty details such as having the right flash player.
I am not an OSX user because well I prefer Linux. But I am also not dumb to say that Apple has iCrap!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
.. is already a Microsoft store, except for the Apple stores of course. What's Microsoft going to do differently? Sell t-shirts?
microsoft: we'll show them - put an ugly, pre-form shack (that might be confused with a windshield repair 'shop') across from the apple store !!!
apple: oh noz they dinnt- ohhh, look how cheap it is ! (biiiiiig grinnnn)
microsoft: we're not cheap, or ugly- WE HAVE A FREE CONCERT COMING BITCHES !!!! wp7 will own your iphone !!
apple: even bigger grin, whispering to the hotter female employees "get ready to hand out free bottled water and free $10 itunes cards, on the sidewalk the second the concert starts. dance a little!" wink wink
microsoft: our concert is rockin ! look at all the sheeple loving on us !!!
apple: wait for it.... waiiiiiiit.....
The football jock, or whatever sports person takes the stage to say something 'cool' about windoze... and the crowd takes three giant steps back. One person realizes he's still holding his free itunes card... and bumps his buddy on the way back to the apple stores....
apple hottie chick, sweaty from dancin and smilin: "Welcome back, what can I do for you?"
customer: ya, i need a new iphone
apple hottie chick: "OK ! Lets go get one !"
sale, and a fail, all in one city block. awesome
Apple is a publicly traded company. Bill Gates is a real person who can, if he choose to do so, exchange his entire fortune for a Twinkie. I'm kind of happy that the SEC would frown on a publicly traded company that decided to emulate Gates' largesse, and I love Twinkies.
" shiny object hipster yuppie market"
Trying pretty hard to fit in with the rest of the trendy Apple haters aren't ya?
Multitasking first? No. Every iPhone has had it from day 1, just not on every app sucking your battery dry.
Yes, you can accurately communicate the information, but you have to add 10-50% more words (or worse) to do so. That sounds like a "flaw" to me.
If the goal of a language is to communicate in the fewest number of grunts possible then every natively spoken tongue on the planet is extremely flawed. Given that no real language seem to be designed to optimize this (I suppose there might be some strange invented ones but even ones like esperanto don't seem to have this as their primary goal) I'd suggest that this is, in fact, NOT the primary aim of a language and so it cannot be said to be a flaw.
What are they trying to get from this?
1) Who walks to a B&M store to wait in line these days?
2) Do they think they can sidetrack the type of person that is going to the apple store to go to their store for something?
I may 'be a mac' -- but I have *no* idea who these throngs of neophytes and loungers are when I am forced to go to an apple store to get something at full price because I need it *now* and no one else in town carries something.
Given the level of sophistication in MS product, I would exepct their storefronts to demonstrate a similar technology level.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I just want to know why Win7 hangs on shutdown, because I have a File Window open. WTF?!!!
I drank what? -- Socrates
I miss 'beleaguered' days. Shoulda' bought more stock back then, when it was $10-$12/share.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Re: Android don't forget voice actions first, over the air updates first, multi-tasking first (no?), and being much more open with the entire apps process (apps allowed, side loading, etc).
I had all of these on Nokia N95... IPhone's innovations wasn't much about features. The only brand new thing for a phone was multi-touch - the revolution was the combination of this with Apple's combination of usability and focus: Let's do the most important things first and do them right the rest can wait.
[1] Apple's big Siri announcement is not about voice control - they've had it themselves since 3GS, and I had it on my Nokia N95. Apple claims that they have added contextual understanding, so you can almost have a conversation about it rather than exact commands.
[2] Nokia N95 had almost everything, but it wasn't very usable... it being the pinnacle of pre-iPhone phones shows how much difference Apple did.
Seeing as how ms has lost the most valuable member of their creative team, they must be getting desperate.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran