I went to the Apple Store this morning........

Yes but, look at our builder, who sold the insides of his 10 year old pc, a stamp is worth more than the inside of a 10 year old pc, and he upgraded it, with what, 9 year old part? It has to be extremely hard to find parts that will fit a 10 year old pc.
And do you build your own cow, or your own house?
I make more money working during the time it takes to build a pc than I would save by building it.
I guess apple products are as overpriced as a $2000 fender guitar when you can get one for $300 or better yet build your own.
Actually, the apple store is a little weird. However, the people working there have had training contrary to most other electronics store.

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They sell computer gear at those stores?

I thought they were green grocers.

 

Just like with guitars, sometimes aesthetics is important. I'm a computer programmer by profession, I can read and understand Linux kernel source code and assembly language and I could easily build my own computer if I wanted to.

I don't, however. My needs are minimal and I don't want to go through any trouble. I want a sleek, good-looking (ymmv) computer that does everything I want, with a minimum hassle. No one does that except Apple. And from my experience, the smugness of Apple users is greatly exaggerated when compared to the smugness of Windows users and especially the Linux people.

(fwiw, I use Win7 at work and it's certainly giving OS X a run for its money)

 

+1, especially the part about smug Linux users. Especially the ones that flash that wee penguin like a secret badge of honour. Ridiculously cliquey. Again, they serve my argument well; programmers making stuff to catch the attention of other programmers.

 

The title for this thread would make an excellent first line for a blues tune.

 

Well, you won't be getting one from the OP, looks like.

 

There is a marvellous advert for a cider (I think it's cider) running on UK TV at the moment poking fun at Apple Stores. Makes me smile every time I see it.

I own several Apple products and am very pleased with them. They work well, are easy to use and are beautifully designed. I admire how the company aims to offer a complete user experience, the retail stores being an important part of that ethos. However, the almost quasi-religious devotion the brand invokes in some of their most devoted followers I very discomforting.

Their product launches in particular make my toes curl; the gathered masses of the faithful wait patiently overnight to be the first inline to worship at the altar. The high priests whip the devoted into an excited state of delirium before the holy relic is presented (in exchange for a bag of silver, naturally). I'm over egging the pudding of course, but no gadget, no matter how "cool", should provoke that kind of reaction.

 

Apple make some great products.

Personally, I find that walking into an Apple Store is an experience akin to meeting the Stepford Wives in Disney version of a Tech Store inside a Medical Experimentation Room.

Its a bit twee , a bit toooo cooool , and maybe a tiny bit disconcerting .

But , great service. There's no doubt.

 

Sure they can. Anyone with an IQ in single figures can base jump too. Not everyone wants to do either.

I guess you could also build a Custom Shop quality guitar for a price that would make the comparable Fender CS look an overpriced product of quasi-religious brand-love...

 

Apple vs. PC is a personal choice. I am a little surprised though at just how personal some folks take it. I never owned anything Apple until a little over a year ago when I got a MacBook Pro. I love the thing. That doesn't mean that I hate PC's though. I also dig the fact that Tim Cook is an Auburn Alum.

 

I know the OP personally. We might only be "too cool" among other middle-aged nerds or the kids with dads who no longer do neat active stuff.

As an IT director I have to work with several platforms and have the constraints of budget, effective solutions and happy users. A lot but not all Apple products and the Apple Stores work well in that sense.

Apple Stores and Verizon corporate stores are in a league of their own as far as my being able to send a non-tech savvy sales person, truck driver or kitchen manager in and have them come out with problem solved and happy. The Apple Store reservation system is awesome. It could be me or one of my users and I know we get high chance of human with clue and not wasting time.

I used to keep at least two brands of phone in case one was problematic. Some business applications moved one group to iPhones only. We buy them for same price we did other smart phones but still have some Samsung and Motorola among the 650 employees. The Apple phones are proving cheapest and most reliable smart phones if you ask the accountants.

Not all the Apple Store is great by me. The title "Genius" is googy when you are in my seat. I have to know multiple technology platforms. The Apple Genius staff don't know what those of us who've achieved Cisco, Microsoft and IBM certifications know. They can also be rather smug.

BTW: This for the most part praise of Apple is coming from a Google and Microsoft stockholder.

 

I took a cracked iPod touch into the Apple store for "repair" (they just replace them) last year.

I was met by the greeter genius at the door, who made me an appointment at the Genius Bar. When I explained why I was there, she said, with tremendous feigned empathy, "I'm so sorry for your loss."

We're talking about my iPod, lady, not my grandma.

Going into the store is certainly an experience of a psychological retail experiment.

No cash registers = the false implication that "we're not really selling anything, and you're not really buying anything."

 

The Apple Store nearest me (King of Prussia, PA) is always packed, but I've never had a bad experience there. I've purchased an iPad, 2 iPhones and an Apple TV there. The rest of the Apple stuff came from the Apple.com store or on the secondary market.

Like lots of successful brands, Apple has some cultish followers, some informed consumers, some informed detractors, and some cultish detractors. It's just fun to wash those consumers interact, especially the two cultish extremes. They're like the Middle East of consumers.

 

I like the Apple store but it is a bit deferent, being in my 60tys I'm more use too the in your face or I'm to busy for you type sales person. The latest Mac-Rumor is they are going to have wine and cheese tasting while you're waiting for an appointment.

 

My saying is that Apple has the $1000 solution to the $300 problem.

I bought my high school son a powerbook last year because in order to do his homework, he needed it. The high school is equipped with free Apple computers. A regular pc would not properly work. See how that works?

He gets a dent in the aluminum case. Kids already have 40 pounds of crap that they have to drag around in school, so I'm not surprised. Cost to replace the bottom is about $300. I pulled it apart and used my hack metalworking skills to push out the dent. The fan started sounding more like a machine gun than a fan. Apple had the $125 replacement. We bought a knock off on line for $6 including shipping.

If you "need" all that stuff synchronized so you have 4 email accounts, 30 Terabytes of pictures, your calendar, mapping, alarms, coffee making ability and marriage counciling on one device, I guess it's for you. I actually have an iphone, but it's owned by my work and locked down. I can't even use itunes. All I really want is a phone with real buttons that makes clear calls. (I'm typing on an apple desktop, by the way). I'm not an apple fan. If I want to do something on the computer that I don't know how to do....well....I have a 16 and 12 year old in the house. That's what they're for.

 

Funny how everyone has a take. The message I got from the OP was that people make the difference. He has a good sales rep.

 

Come on man, The guy had a great experience, service exceeded his expectations and product worked as easily as promised. What exactly would you want???? Cheaper???
Quality costs more, economics 101. You don't go to a Church Carnival and expect Disney World.
One thing I've learned in life, bargains are few and far between and you usally get what you pay for.
I enjoy reading the posts where folks compliment the great service they receive from customers and guests and hope everyone on this ist continues to share of times they had expectations exceeded.

 

Reading through here I think of another element.

Most of the time I'm dealing with the Apple Store because 650 people are connected to the wide area network I manage.

My mother is in her 80s and by coincidence she wandered in the Apple Store the day before Steve Jobs died and got an iPhone that day. Add up the good service, good products and training and we have a grandmother in her 80s who will do a video chat with grandkids from a pub in a foreign land and does her own firmware updates.

Most important here is this grandmother in her 80s is a hospice worker. She's figured out how to use Apple's technology platform to connect people and families in tough times.

As an IT director I use it because it's a solution that works and is cost-effective.

You could say my mother has figured out ways to use it that are priceless.

I see the way the cult or love continues even though bright and loud stores are not exactly my style.

Finally, haters can hate but am pretty sure AAPL has got a P/E ratio of 10.x, dividend yield 2.5 to 3% and an enviable amount of cash. Argue all you want but that's as enviable as cool products and stores people like.

 

I work in a scientific/research environment. We have every kind of computer imaginable in the labs, but for our general purpose office computers (and travel laptops) they assign us Dell computers with Windows (still on XP...LOL)...nice several thousand dollar ones. One thing we are noticing is that the younger crop of non-technical staff coming on are pitching absolute fits when told to do their work on these computers instead of their mac, iphone, etc.

 

Up the Punx! haha, that's damn near adorable. I've seen that kind of innocence from my friends like that before.

On apple, their music/tablet stuff is neato, I still have a 2005 ipod video my friend gave me which, although I replaced the firmware with Rockbox, still works fine so I'll give them that. And the same buddy has an ipad 2 which works nicely, but I'd rather have an android based tablet with usb ports. Their stuff is premium priced because apple is known as a premium brand. You can buy a higher powered tablet or computer for a lot less, but it doesn't have that fancy apple logo.

Apple computers are another story though, I don't like the interface, the lack of right click, and they cost an arm and a leg more than a comparable HP based on the same intel processor and parts. The people I know from tech school that were in programming/computer sciences wouldn't be caught dead on an Mac, if that tells you anything.

Btw, Macs and apple stuff CAN get viruses, but they can't get windows based viruses, just OS X/Linux-based ones of which there are plenty. So don't think you can go surfing the interwebs with no chance of your computer getting the virtua-herps.