I agree, it's nearly the same position VW was in just after they came out with the new Beatle. During the 80's and most of the 90's they'd have some very serious declined and had stopped their dealership design standards for a host of reasons. Well as the became a more high profile car maker again they now had all these dealerships that looked like they should be selling Yugos or something. Of course dealerships are extremely expensive properties but their working with them to improve and modernize. They have also reinstated design standards for new dealership, and set a number standards ALL dealerships must follow including standard modern VW signs, uniforms for the techs., ect.
Apple in many ways was very similar position, most of the resellers I've been to were in small strip stores and looked like a place you'd go to buy a $200.00 used computer. 70% of them were rude, pushie, uninterested, or just jerks. I'll bet Apple looked into trying to work with their resellers like VW is with their dealerships but realized that - 1) Most resellers didn't have the capital to improve their stores to the level Apple needed 2) Apple still would be at the mercy of resellers customer service policies 3) Resellers may carry more than one line and have the potential to steer customers to other computer options. Plus VW has built in ways to control their customer service experience that I'm not sure Apple could implement and would probablly be so costly as to make them beyond impossible at Apple product price/profit points unless we all want a 20% increase of end price of Apple's product line.
I really don't believe apple had any choice but open stores of their own. As far as I'm concerned the resellers need to get with the program and realize where Apple is today. No one wants to buy a iMac in a place that looks like a Goodwill computer donation site ( which is what the local resellers reminds me of). Please remember Gateways stores and what a flop they were profit wise, Apple took an awe inspiring risk opening their own stores (ya its worked will but it could have bombed and lost millions/bllions?).
One last point and then I'll let this topic go - REMEMBER COMPUSA, BEST BUY, & CIRCUT CITY - these stores are nice open clean places with the kind of store fronts Apple needed/needs, you'd think they'd have been doing OK with Apple but as most of you should know they've been a total flop with everything but the iPod. It coming down to steering, poor associate knowledge of products, poor product placement, and the fact apple isn't the very profitable for them. Only one still sells apple's computer line in all of their stores, COMPUSA. I could write a small novel about what's wrong with COMPUSA handling of Apple products. I won't bore you with the whole thing but the main points would be -
1)Steering
2)Product Placement
3)Steerin
4)Staff Knowledge
5)Steering
6)Customer Service
7)Steering
8)Lack of Advertizing
9)Steering
10)Staff lazy lack of interest and vacant gaze.
I could write alot more about this and if you guys are interested just post but I don't want to bore you all if no one cares about the business end of why Apple had no choice but to open their own stores.
Please excuse my spelling, I don't know how to get a spell checker to work with this and I've misplaced the dictionary.
Ok if your going get into Labor rates for car techs and not talk about computers you should get your info straight.
1. tech's don't make 80 an hour their company does they normally make from 15 to 30 an hour depending on the car line and their experence. Their company doesn't have a pure profit on the rest of the money they must also pay the service writer, the cashier, the porters and detailers + they have massive insurance, equipment, education/training and ult. cost. Most dealership shop barely break even or post a very very small profit. Car dealers make money selling cars not on their shops.
2. If you are a programmer making $15 - $30 you can pretty much bet your company is charging their customers quite a bit more for your time.
3. You get to work in a nice office, and i bet your not worrying about increased cancer/health risks found in mech. tech. due to their work environment.Your lose of hearing from impact tools and when was the last time you lost a finger due to kernal failure? Or just came home with your hands cut up by the dread blue screen of death. No? That hasn't happened, well techs burn, shock, bruise and cut themselves all the time, next time take a look at their hands - I think you'd perfer you small chance of corp. tunnel to their almost daily dose of abuse.
4. Ya on some jobs they might get the job done in under the standard time and make a little extra money but that's been going down for years and they don't get paid a cent for all the time their filling out paperwork or waiting for the parts guy to pull what they need. Also there are jobs that eat their ass where they get paid much less then they put in. Plus the real bitch is if their dealership doesn't bring in enough work - they're still required to put in their 8 - 10 hour days but they might just get paid 2 or 3 hours for that day. They also have some of the worst benifits and vacation policies. How would you like to spend 50 hours at work but come home with a check for 20 or 30, oh and one of the worst times of year is right before christmas.
Anyway I know you guys aren't trying to put down techs really, it's just a sore place for me. Believe me techs don't have it easy - most customers really don't understand or appreciate their techs and think their just trying to screw them but most of them are really good people. Ya there are hacks but there are sucky people in every industry - I mean just look at M$.;) Sorry to be off topic.
This depends on how crazy you are about accessing your music. I use general genres like punk, jazz, techno, alternative - ect. but then I break them down with groups (example: the genre alternative has the groups college punk, dark, folk, gothic, ind, grunge, hair, new wave, & rage) the bonus is you can "share" groups like college punk using smart playlist I can get all my regular punk + the college punk in one place but I can also seperate all my old school punk or just my hardcore if I'm in that mood. Because I'm truely crazy I also use comments alot to make smart playlist of very specific music that might be in any genre examples: quiet, fav, cover, dance, party, adult, smoke, wakeup, rome, midnight, & fem. If you feel like doing this you can end up with great smart playlists like every techno song that's breakbeat & less than 8 mins. & rated more than 3 stars & has fem vocals. Or every quiet gothic +2 rated song that hasn't been listened to in 3 weeks. Or every - well I could list like hundreds of examples. If you have a truely large library this is invalueable but do all this in small bites or else your mate might think your a little obssessed.
P.S. If your not seeing a column for groups or comments - Make sure your on iTunes menu bar then click on edit go down to view options and check show groups and show comments.
Before you start adding comments if you have downloaded some music choose (depending on the size of your library) library or do one genre at a time then alt - i for get info, say yes i want to edit multi files - click on info - go down to coments check box and then click on ok(please pay attention to what your doing if you haven't used this feature before - I don't want you to accidently rename everything). This should wipe out all those annoying comments that people put in . From now on create a play list to track your downloads and every month or so clean up their comments.
I would use a comment to keep track of all your downloaded music - for a little while I did download a few songs but I really love my music and I found the sound quality so low I eventually just erased them all and because I had used that comment it was really easy to find them and trash them so my library wasn't polluted with poorly ripped songs. I guess you could probably find them by bit rate to if you didn't want to make them stick out. Whatever hope this helps ya out.
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I agree, it's nearly the same position VW was in just after they came out with the new Beatle. During the 80's and most of the 90's they'd have some very serious declined and had stopped their dealership design standards for a host of reasons. Well as the became a more high profile car maker again they now had all these dealerships that looked like they should be selling Yugos or something. Of course dealerships are extremely expensive properties but their working with them to improve and modernize. They have also reinstated design standards for new dealership, and set a number standards ALL dealerships must follow including standard modern VW signs, uniforms for the techs., ect.
Apple in many ways was very similar position, most of the resellers I've been to were in small strip stores and looked like a place you'd go to buy a $200.00 used computer. 70% of them were rude, pushie, uninterested, or just jerks. I'll bet Apple looked into trying to work with their resellers like VW is with their dealerships but realized that -
1) Most resellers didn't have the capital to improve their stores to the level Apple needed
2) Apple still would be at the mercy of resellers customer service policies
3) Resellers may carry more than one line and have the potential to steer customers to other computer options.
Plus VW has built in ways to control their customer service experience that I'm not sure Apple could implement and would probablly be so costly as to make them beyond impossible at Apple product price/profit points unless we all want a 20% increase of end price of Apple's product line.
I really don't believe apple had any choice but open stores of their own. As far as I'm concerned the resellers need to get with the program and realize where Apple is today. No one wants to buy a iMac in a place that looks like a Goodwill computer donation site ( which is what the local resellers reminds me of). Please remember Gateways stores and what a flop they were profit wise, Apple took an awe inspiring risk opening their own stores (ya its worked will but it could have bombed and lost millions/bllions?).
One last point and then I'll let this topic go - REMEMBER COMPUSA, BEST BUY, & CIRCUT CITY - these stores are nice open clean places with the kind of store fronts Apple needed/needs, you'd think they'd have been doing OK with Apple but as most of you should know they've been a total flop with everything but the iPod. It coming down to steering, poor associate knowledge of products, poor product placement, and the fact apple isn't the very profitable for them. Only one still sells apple's computer line in all of their stores, COMPUSA. I could write a small novel about what's wrong with COMPUSA handling of Apple products. I won't bore you with the whole thing but the main points would be -
1)Steering
2)Product Placement
3)Steerin
4)Staff Knowledge
5)Steering
6)Customer Service
7)Steering
8)Lack of Advertizing
9)Steering
10)Staff lazy lack of interest and vacant gaze.
I could write alot more about this and if you guys are interested just post but I don't want to bore you all if no one cares about the business end of why Apple had no choice but to open their own stores.
Please excuse my spelling, I don't know how to get a spell checker to work with this and I've misplaced the dictionary.
Ok if your going get into Labor rates for car techs and not talk about computers you should get your info straight. 1. tech's don't make 80 an hour their company does they normally make from 15 to 30 an hour depending on the car line and their experence. Their company doesn't have a pure profit on the rest of the money they must also pay the service writer, the cashier, the porters and detailers + they have massive insurance, equipment, education/training and ult. cost. Most dealership shop barely break even or post a very very small profit. Car dealers make money selling cars not on their shops. 2. If you are a programmer making $15 - $30 you can pretty much bet your company is charging their customers quite a bit more for your time. 3. You get to work in a nice office, and i bet your not worrying about increased cancer/health risks found in mech. tech. due to their work environment.Your lose of hearing from impact tools and when was the last time you lost a finger due to kernal failure? Or just came home with your hands cut up by the dread blue screen of death. No? That hasn't happened, well techs burn, shock, bruise and cut themselves all the time, next time take a look at their hands - I think you'd perfer you small chance of corp. tunnel to their almost daily dose of abuse. 4. Ya on some jobs they might get the job done in under the standard time and make a little extra money but that's been going down for years and they don't get paid a cent for all the time their filling out paperwork or waiting for the parts guy to pull what they need. Also there are jobs that eat their ass where they get paid much less then they put in. Plus the real bitch is if their dealership doesn't bring in enough work - they're still required to put in their 8 - 10 hour days but they might just get paid 2 or 3 hours for that day. They also have some of the worst benifits and vacation policies. How would you like to spend 50 hours at work but come home with a check for 20 or 30, oh and one of the worst times of year is right before christmas. Anyway I know you guys aren't trying to put down techs really, it's just a sore place for me. Believe me techs don't have it easy - most customers really don't understand or appreciate their techs and think their just trying to screw them but most of them are really good people. Ya there are hacks but there are sucky people in every industry - I mean just look at M$. ;) Sorry to be off topic.
This depends on how crazy you are about accessing your music. I use general genres like punk, jazz, techno, alternative - ect. but then I break them down with groups (example: the genre alternative has the groups college punk, dark, folk, gothic, ind, grunge, hair, new wave, & rage) the bonus is you can "share" groups like college punk using smart playlist I can get all my regular punk + the college punk in one place but I can also seperate all my old school punk or just my hardcore if I'm in that mood. Because I'm truely crazy I also use comments alot to make smart playlist of very specific music that might be in any genre examples: quiet, fav, cover, dance, party, adult, smoke, wakeup, rome, midnight, & fem. If you feel like doing this you can end up with great smart playlists like every techno song that's breakbeat & less than 8 mins. & rated more than 3 stars & has fem vocals. Or every quiet gothic +2 rated song that hasn't been listened to in 3 weeks. Or every - well I could list like hundreds of examples. If you have a truely large library this is invalueable but do all this in small bites or else your mate might think your a little obssessed.
P.S. If your not seeing a column for groups or comments - Make sure your on iTunes menu bar then click on edit go down to view options and check show groups and show comments.
Before you start adding comments if you have downloaded some music choose (depending on the size of your library) library or do one genre at a time then alt - i for get info, say yes i want to edit multi files - click on info - go down to coments check box and then click on ok(please pay attention to what your doing if you haven't used this feature before - I don't want you to accidently rename everything). This should wipe out all those annoying comments that people put in . From now on create a play list to track your downloads and every month or so clean up their comments.
I would use a comment to keep track of all your downloaded music - for a little while I did download a few songs but I really love my music and I found the sound quality so low I eventually just erased them all and because I had used that comment it was really easy to find them and trash them so my library wasn't polluted with poorly ripped songs. I guess you could probably find them by bit rate to if you didn't want to make them stick out. Whatever hope this helps ya out.