Why doesn't Randall Stross name these clueless analysts who insisted that the Apple Store concept would flop, and be a huge money loss for Apple? I want to know their names so that I never pay attention to any advice they might give in the future. Just as in the political arena, if you are so insanely wrong, I make a mental note, and vow to ignore you in the future (like Wolfowitz, or Thomas Friedman, et al)
Digital Domain: Apple’s Lesson for Sony’s Stores: Just Connect
Apple has made retail seem ridiculously easy. But why hasn’t the Windows side of the personal computer business figured it out?RETAIL is supposed to be hard. Apple has made it seem ridiculously easy. And yet it must be harder than it appears, or why hasn’t the Windows side of the personal computer business figured it out?
Of the many predictions in the world of technology that have turned out to be spectacularly wrong, a prominent place should be made for what the pundits said in 2001 when Apple opened its first retail store in Tysons Corner, Va. “It’s completely flawed,” one analyst said, and that was the conventional wisdom. Commercial rent and furnishings would be expensive, inventory tricky and margins slim. Experienced computer resellers were struggling, and no computer manufacturer had ever found success operating its own branded stores. Analysts predicted at the time that Apple would shut down the stores and write off the huge losses in two years.
That assuredly would have been the Apple store’s fate had Steve Jobs permitted aesthetic and design considerations to trump all else. But while guiding the planning for the stores in 2000 and 2001, Mr. Jobs took on a more ambitious challenge than building freestanding museums of design that would show the Apple flag and do little else. He set out to create the conditions most likely to convert museum visitors into actual customers, and then to make those customers feel that they were being pampered long after the sale was consummated.
more details about just how poorly designed and staffed the Sony stores are, here: Digital Domain: Apple’s Lesson for Sony’s Stores: Just Connect. I've popped my head in a Sony store too, and also was not impressed.
I remember when Apple opened its mega-glass cubic store on Fifth Avenue. We could watchi it all day long. on Apple.com
I guess the catch was Apple's pricing and slower processor in the past. Plus Evil Empire tactics. Apple is catching up. Sales are up. I have just posted the maybe-list for Instant Karma-Save Darfur. It's on pre-order at iTunes.
Ha u dont like tommy friedman? good boy my dad knew him, said the war he writes about that he was cowering under a desk throughout the whole thing and is a spinless worm lol ya random fact ull prob nvr think about ever again