“A leaked presentation has exposed Microsoft’s tentative plans for its retail stores — and the high degree to which they’ll imitate Apple stores, down to their layouts and even the presence of a dedicated ‘Guru Bar’ for help,” Aidan Malley reports for AppleInsider.
MacDailyNews Take: One thing is different: Anyone who makes a purchase in a Microsoft retail store is immediately locked in.
Malley continues, “The reference store seen by Gizmodo would have a Guru Bar — in some slides labeled as an Answer Bar or Windows Bar — that would directly copy the Genius Bars at Apple stores and let customers make appointments either for help or just to ask questions. The number of products would be kept to a minimum to avoid the confusion present in stores where most Windows PCs are sold today. Microsoft’s outlets would even revive the theater component that Apple has mostly tossed aside: an ‘event space’ at the back of the store would provide a dedicated screen and seating for training sessions or social events.”
Full article, with images, here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is going to backfire on Microsoft, big time. Microsoft ought to just forgo Windows 7, Zune, and these retail stores and instead erect giant billboards every 20 feet that scream, “Derivativesoft. Apple Leads. We Follow Years Later (Poorly).“
Too many people have been to /seen Apple Retail Stores for Microsoft to pretend that they aren’t copying yet again. Microsoft got away with foisting a badly faked upside-down and backwards Mac OS upon the oblivious and calling it, laughably, “innovation,” because many poor souls had never used a real Mac. Fast-forward some years and, with 100+ million iPods in people’s hands, Microsoft’s modus operandi didn’t work so well with the Zune. It’s not going to fly this time, either. Microsoft’s blatant mimicry of Apple will work against them this time.
Do your own work for once Microsoft. Oh, right, you’re utterly incapable of such a feat.*
*Disclaimer: Microsoft did once try to come up with their own idea: Microsoft Bob™. It was such a thermonuclear shitbomb, you almost can’t blame them for immediately deciding to just give up and go back to the only thing that’s ever really worked for them: copying others’ work and calling it “innovation.”
Direct link via YouTube here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Joe Architect” for the heads up.]
Apple does the same thing as microsoft, but does it with class and brings added value by taking multiple great ideas (smartphone+touchscreen+good ui) and turns them into gold. Microsoft is just carbon-copying Apple, something apple never did so blatently. People will see it for what it is, and disgus/contempt for blatent stealing is all they’re gonna get from anyone who has at least 10% of a brain.