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Touching the back wall of the Apple store

(blog.lauramichet.com)
252 points nivethan | 2 comments | 27 Jun 25 02:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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bigyabai ◴[27 Jun 25 03:13 UTC] No.44393404[source]▶
> We were fascinated with the Apple store in the mall because it was essentially an interactive luxury goods store where they'd let you actually grasp all the luxury goods with your teenager hands.

The secret being, of course, that they're not actually luxury goods. Like many things at the mall, it's a high-margin doodad sold to people in the proverbial impulse aisle of life. Dippin' Dots, knock-off watches, Build-A-Bear workshop - all in same vein of "looks expensive but is cheap to make" no different from the iPod.

I think the American shopping mall is one of the things that helped me contextualize Apple's brand identity. Apple does good marking in isolation or on a screen, SF Pro looks very stunning and the Apple logo is chic and simple. But so is the Cartier logo. And the Rolex storefront. Or any of the other genuinely valuable things sold at malls. It's the marketing that people respond to, not the value of a good.

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LeoPanthera ◴[30 Jun 25 04:38 UTC] No.44419440[source]▶
I don't buy this argument at all.

Apple stuff has always been expensive, yes, but it's not "luxury". You get what you pay for. Apple products are the best in their category, despite the surprisingly organized hate machine that has existed forever.

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1. crooked-v ◴[30 Jun 25 04:45 UTC] No.44419478[source]▶
Well, usually. There have been some absolute low-quality fiascos like the whole butterfly keyboard thing.

But one thing that really stuck with me was a few years back when I was making a spreadsheet of standard tech choices available for new employees for a startup, and almost all the Linux or Windows laptops out there that I could trust to last out of the box as long as a (non-butterfly-keyboard) Macbook had a baseline of 1080p screens, with upcharges just to get to 1440p. It might be better these days, but I felt like I was taking crazy pills just trying to find a certain baseline of quality for tech that would be getting used all the time every day.

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2. cosmic_cheese ◴[30 Jun 25 06:12 UTC] No.44419984[source]▶
It feels almost like there’s this weird game that laptop manufacturers are playing to find something to skimp on with their models. Might be the screen, the screen’s antiglare coating, keyboard/chassis flex, input device quality, port placement, cooling capability, noise, maybe something else entirely, but it’s almost a rule that some aspect of the laptop must suck. Even the best reviewed models out there have some more-than-papercut flaws.

Screens have gotten better thankfully, but now the thing is to use screen panels that are only practically usable at 1.5x/150% UI scaling for some reason. It’s better than being stuck with those horrid 1366x768 TN panels that used to plague laptops, but it’s still more annoying than panels that can do integer scaling well. Given the choice between 1.5x panel and its 1x decent resolution counterpart, I’d actually prefer the latter just because it’s less trouble.