Microsoft to open 32 pop-up retail stores for the holidays Whenever Apple opens a new retail store, it's a major event with fanbois lining up to be the first to grace its stone tile floors. By comparison, Microsoft's foray into the retail market will be a quiet affair – almost tentative – beginning with 32 pop-up stores to open in the US and Canada for the holiday season. Microsoft …
I was thinking the same thing. Why are two of the stores within spitting distance of Boston yet the whole state of California gets 2 and only 3 in Texas. My guess is that they signed a deal with a retailer in those areas to rent a bit of space for the time. Pretty clever I think as it gives them a fair sampling of which areas would be best to put their own stores.
I also thought it funny that many, if not most, of the locations also have an Apple store. Granted I only checked about seven or eight at random and only the Ohio location didn't have an Apple shop, I guess they aren't renting space from Apple.
Apple has stores in both Aventura and Dadeland Malls. It would be almost worth the effort to drive down I-95 to see how Microsoft does head-to-head... except that both Aventura and Dadeland are in _Dade_ County, and I don't go near La Habana del Norte unless someone's paying me. And someone would have to be paying me a _lot_ to go on I-95 in Dade in December.
I wonder if they will go with the same "folding tables" style decor as those other pop-up stores that sell remaindered books or Persian rugs in empty shopping centre stalls at Xmas.
In any event, I don't expect they will need to be hiring many "queue attendants" to keep jostling punters in line for when the next Lumia hits the streets
.. I think they know already that a SOFTWARE shop may not quite work as well as a HARDWARE shop, so no fanfare means less egg on face when it fails.
I wish them luck. No, wait. It's Microsoft. I hope their aggregate customer numbers for year 1 is 20 - and 19 of those only came in because it was raining outside. There. Payback for Windows. Bwahahaha.
Was that fanatic enough, or slightly overdone?
Beer, because I can.
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More importantly, the "pop-up" store concept means that when you want/need to return it, you trudge back, and hey presto! the store is now just another whitewashed retail vacancy.
Quite a good idea for MS, really, sell on promises in the flesh, and run away before people have the chance to realise they've been had.
I don't know, I have a MacBook which also runs Windows XP (out of sheer perversity, not because its of any use other than as a bandwidth tester), and Linux (OpenSuSE, CentOS and Mint). And I use OpenOffice (free), iWorks (free with the kit but very usable), and MS Office (roughly 1/3 of the cost of the laptop, and I only need it because of other people).
I have been through two OS upgrades with the machine already (it's from mid 2010), which have set me back for, umm, £30 in total (£15 per time). And the Apps I bought run both one my MacBook and on my work PC when I am logged in - legally.
Oh, and every weekend or so I let it check for updates. Yes, that's weekend, instead of every hour or "patch Tuesday because we can't afford people noticing just how much we need to replace as we really shipped an alpha product".
Wanna try again? I'm like an ex smoker - two years ago I gave up Microsoft. Best decision I ever made.
I have said this before - I buy kit because it works, not because some idiot in a suit tells me it's wonderful (and by "works" I mean by default, not after spending a week hacking and patching up the problems it creates - don't have the time).
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