10/22/2009 05:56:47 PM 
(4) 
(4) The fact that this clearly staged euphoria was manufactured for public consumption, note the presence of TV cameras, is a sign that Microsoft means business. I guess If you can't beat them you have no choice, but to join them.
Clearly, Microsoft understands that Apple is onto something and believes it can succeed if it provides a facsimile experience at retail.
I understand how excitement could be faked at the opening for the media, but finding people who can demonstrate passion, excitement and charisma is not going to be easy.
There's something deeper at work in the Apple store, something than can expressed in store design and that's the thing Microsoft's going to have such a hard job copying.
Posted by Ed Cotton
page from Apple's playbook
If you copy/paste, you copy/paste everything. This crowd is much like the fake line for iPhones in Poland: http://bit.ly/7rSoE
Posted by ilya on 10/23/2009 04:45 PM
If you copy/paste, you copy/paste everything. This crowd is much like the fake line for iPhones in Poland: http://bit.ly/7rSoE
Posted by ilya on 10/23/2009 04:45 PM
A telling difference...
...that I heard in an NPR story was that before the store opened, the staff led the waiting customers in a chant of "Mi-cro-soft! Mi-cro-soft!". Can you imagine anyone at an Apple store chanting "Ap-ple!"? The staff would probably be more averse to it than the customers. Microsoft has never been a consumer-focused brand. They are, and have always been, a competition-focused, imitate & iterate brand, and its champions have always been their partners and distribution channels (rather than customers or mere end users). Using that lens, the scene makes perfect sense. The euphoria here is very real--it's just all coming from the employee side.
Posted by Baldwin Cheng on 11/03/2009 12:21 AM
...that I heard in an NPR story was that before the store opened, the staff led the waiting customers in a chant of "Mi-cro-soft! Mi-cro-soft!". Can you imagine anyone at an Apple store chanting "Ap-ple!"? The staff would probably be more averse to it than the customers. Microsoft has never been a consumer-focused brand. They are, and have always been, a competition-focused, imitate & iterate brand, and its champions have always been their partners and distribution channels (rather than customers or mere end users). Using that lens, the scene makes perfect sense. The euphoria here is very real--it's just all coming from the employee side.
Posted by Baldwin Cheng on 11/03/2009 12:21 AM
Lamest . . .
that has to be one of the lamest things i have ever seen! High-fives down a line of staffers!!! WTF!!!
Posted by Mike on 11/04/2009 06:40 AM
that has to be one of the lamest things i have ever seen! High-fives down a line of staffers!!! WTF!!!
Posted by Mike on 11/04/2009 06:40 AM
It appears you don't have Flash installed.
1) the fact that it's clearly fake makes it worse than if they hadn't bothered. 2) the fact that it's a blatant copy of a competitor that's beating them in mindshare but not marketshare makes it an admission of inferiority. 3) the decision to make all the screens blue is probably a bad one when you're already known for "the blue screen of death." call me crazy, but unless they start doing something right (http://www.semanticargument.com/2009/04/01/more-on-microsofts-weak-ad-campaign/), I think we're witnessing the beginning of a very slow death at the hands of Apple and Google.