Touching the back wall of the Apple store

I remember the first time I went into an Apple Store.

I was looking at a 17” PowerBook, salivating at the screen and performance but struggling with justifying the price tag. An incredibly nice lady walked up to me and asked if I had any questions. I told her I was thinking it over as it was a large purchase. She beamed and said “Of course, that’s totally understandable. In fact it takes on average 3 visits to an Apple Store before making a purchase”. It was the smartest, nicest, most low key way of saying don’t feel pressure…you’ll be coming back, and then you’ll buy the machine you’ve always wanted.

Very on brand. And surprisingly still not really copied by others.

It isn't copied by other consumer electronics companies because none of them have the brand value of Apple. Microsoft tried the model with its own chain of stores but failed pretty quickly. Most tech is better suited for Best Buy-like megastores where shoppers can browse and try a bunch of products and brands in one go. And for phones (at least in America) most people still prefer to go to their carrier store.

Go outside of tech though and the Apple Store experience is commonplace. Apple itself copied the concept directly from high end fashion houses.

Microsoft stores were abysmal. They felt like Best Buy without the convenience somehow.

I went in to try the (then new) Surface Studio (the drafting table like AIO) and they couldn’t find the peripheral knob. But it kept triggering, but it turned out employees would mess around with customers by spinning it while they used it.

Of course that’s just one store, but I walked by several and they all just looked depressing inside. Layouts felt about as poorly planned as a Best Buy or staples display, and even things as simple as lighting was harsher.

It’s just not as simple as making a store. The store has to provide the right vibe, and Microsoft don’t understand vibe.

I expected they'd do better at the products with their own name on them, but I the MS Store near me didn't stock even most standard Surface devices

Plus, IIRC their return policy on what they had in stock was worse than other PC retailers

You can trust Microsoft to make anything they touch suck. This has been a constant for decades at this point. Please give me contradicting examples, if they exist.

> You can trust Microsoft to make anything they touch suck.

Their stock doesn't stuck. Latest figures show MSFT has a $3.69 Trillion market cap, while apple is sitting at $3.00 Trillion.

You're living in a bubble where you think "nobody uses Microsoft."

Everybody uses Microsoft, because they have to. Not because they love it or even like it.

That's the root cause of why the stores failed.

Think about it: how many people openly say that they love to use Apple products vs people who openly say they love Microsoft products?

I have never ever heard anybody say/write about a great Microsoft product.

I write all of this as someone who uses Windows, Teams and other Microsoft crap every day all day.

Excel is one example of a product that is well liked and considered extremely valuable by some people. Azure (if that’s still the name for their aws competitor) is also reasonably well liked from what I can tell. Certainly it seemed they were beating gcp by having a product people liked more.