Microsoft’s Folly: The Blue Store of Death

Leigh McMullen ()

"Zombies in a Mall" by Steve Rhodes

"Zombies in a Mall" by Steve Rhodes

I tried to write this article seriously. After all I’m an executive management consultant and an analyst; this is what I do for a living.

Even Leander chimed in, “Leigh, you’re becoming a parody of yourself, a crank only hauled out to rant about stuff and then tucked back in the closet.”

I want you all to know I tried, I really did. But this notion of Microsoft opening up stores is so Dog-Damned Stupid, it makes my fricken head want to explode.

Follow me after the jump to find out why.

In his book, ‘Inside Steve’s Brain‘, our own Leander Kahney wrote a whole chapter about the formula for the success of the Apple Stores. Too bad the strategic brain trust at Microsoft didn’t even manage to get past the fist page. They just read: “Upscale malls, you say… Hurrm… Good idea… (no percentage for you meester Kahney, bwaaa haaa haaa!!)”

Of course, if they’d have read on, they might have gotten to the part where it’s considered a good suggestion to have a product people actually want to buy.

(Oh yes he did… he went there – ed)

You need to be honest with yourself in business; nobody wants to buy the stuff Microsoft is selling. Windows and MS Office are like the socks and sweaters of the consumer electronics world, i.e. gifts you’d be pissed off about getting.

Tip to MS Marketing Executives: just because lots and lots of people buy your stuff, doesn’t mean they want buy your stuff. They do it because the have to, or are given no choice by the OEM’s you got tied to your purse strings.

Your products are like auto insurance, something people have to own, but don’t necessarily want to, and resent having to spend money on.

Of course, that’s probably the genesis of this whole idea; it wasn’t the Apple store, that’s just a coincidence. Steve Ballmer saw those Progressive Insurance commercials and said: “We needs us some stores like that.”

They’re not real, Steve, there’s no quirky, nerdy, but still really attractive girl, in the mall who is gonna sell you insurance in a box.

Speaking of boxes, what exactly is Microsoft going to sell? They’re a software company, what’s the customer experience there; what’s the merchandising plan, rows upon rows of boxes?

Do they envision customers crying out: Ooooh nice packaging?

To demonstrate their software, perhaps they’re going to ally with Dell, and piss off HP, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Sony. Or they could demo their software on super stylish Sony Viao, and irritate all the others? Maybe to be fair they’ll have one of each maker, like this Tower of Freekin’ Babel of technology, that while chaotically crazy is at least an honest depiction of the Windows™ World™.

Maybe they’re thinking they’ll sell Zunes? They stock one store with Zunes they will be more media players in that outlet than there are in the wild. Try again.

I’m not saying those stores won’t have traffic, they will have mad-crazy foot traffic. They will have traffic counts the likes of which even Apple will ultimately envy.

I want you to picture 18 months after the launch of these ‘Blue Stores of Death’, there will be lines out the door, every Dog-Damned day will look like an iPhone launch –until you look closer and see that the people in line look like comic-con rejects.

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But it’s actually worse than that, because this line is like the unholy union of the DMV and the frickin Post Office, and everyone there is lined up for the Guru bar, shouting in unison: “Where the fuck is the ‘Any Key’?”

Dear lord save us, for we are clearly too Dog-Damned stupid to save ourselves.  Based on the stupid questions reportedly asked of Apple Geniuses, I am haunted by the probable suicide rate of Microsoft’s “Gurus”.

Now of course, I am being a little unfair. Sure, they may need to stock Zoloft in the candy dishes, but Microsoft does in fact have one product people are actually excited to buy. It’s called the XBOX 360, I have one and I love it.

Building on that successful product, as Apple did with the iPod, it sure would be nice to have a place where people could go to experience the XBOX 360, maybe try out games, talk to folks knowledgeable about the platform and media.

It would be genuinely awesome if there were such a place.

Oh wait!

Gamestop has 6200 of them and is opening 400 more this year alone.

21 comments »

About the author

LeighMcMullen

Leigh McMullen leads the Advisory Services & Strategy practices for the professional services arm of one of the Big-Five firms. He has written several books that would cure any insomnia you might have, and is an avid Mac junkie.

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Posted in Humor, Opinions, Top stories |

  • http://www.macpredictions.com Graham Bower

    Great post.

  • jDub

    Microsoft DOES have one product people love buying: Xbox 360. According to the leaked store docs posted recently, Xbox will figure prominently. Also, Zune sucks, but it may get Xbox-ized in the near future, which will make it much more attractive to the homophobic troglodytes that make up the Xbox 360 audience.

  • Chris

    That was laugh out loud funny.
    Long ago at one of the trade shows a keyboard vendor was giving out red “any” keys, while a competitor was giving out green “oh shit” keys.

  • Michael Burns

    About what hardware they will demo on: I’ve got a great idea!!!
    Why don’t they demo on Mac’s running bootcamp or vmware or parallels?
    That will surely get people in the door just to see the pretty machines.

  • Alfred

    Awesome article. Please be hauled out of the cupboard to rant more often. I like it. :)

  • http://mozy.com/mac mac backup software

    what’s are the blue stores of death? are those supposed to be microsoft’s version of the apple store?
    -Jack

  • Martha

    Speaking of Xbox, did you ever fart so hard you ended up in another zip code?

  • Patrick

    I think MS is taking this a bit fast and soon…maybe they feel the momentum and timing is right. But who knows, we haven’t seen any of these stores in the flesh, and it would be foolish to pass judgment so soon. Question: Is the Mac lifestyle that much more fun? If I replace my PC with a Mac and get an iPod will I live a life I have never known? I have lots of fun with my PC, but I do look at it as an appliance and can see it being “boring”. As anyone knows, there are tools and appliances that you must have, and resent having to buy. I just don’t see how having an appliance that is more svelte will make web surfing, email, document creation, etc more fun. And that is what we do with our computers most of the time.

  • http://www.kazzmedia.com Kevin Cassidy

    I agree with you 100%. However, the PC vs Mac / Coke vs Pepsi thing is becoming a little too much like Democrats vs Republicans. Two parties that hate each other because they are opposites, and spouting opinions that have more to do with what their party is “supposed” to feel rather than stating facts in less emotional and more intellectual terms.
    Don’t get me wrong. I love Apple, I love my Macs, and my iPhone. I hate MS and Windows so much I refuse to buy an XBox 360. But I would like ot see articles like this sounds a little less cynical and personal. We Mac Users know we are right and we are less likely to educate the sheep of this nation by coming across as vindictive.
    We don’t need to poke fun at Comic-con attendees to make our message heard.

  • http://www.facebook.com/digocms Rodrigo Santana

    Best article on Microsoft I’ve ever read! LOL!

  • James T

    I believe this sums up what a Microsoft store will be like

    http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/20/

  • Daniel

    Funny that you show zombies, because most mac users resemble each other. There computers look exactly the same. They all say the same things over and over again. Conditioned to line up outside of Mac stores every time there’s a new product release much like Pavlov’s dog.

    I myself use various computers including Macs in my job. My computer is a tool..not a lifestyle. Macs are nice, but to be honest when you weigh the pros and cons of both side, they pretty much come out equal. I dont give a rats butt as to who created what first. All computers have Monitors…do we discuss who’s ripping who off about that? Do you still use the very first DVD player ever created simple because that was the original model that everyone else followed and copied? Or about how PCs ran on INTEL first…are we going to have a big debate about that?

    Seriously…The Genius Bar is a tech support counter with a fancy name. So what if MS comes up with another tech support counter. Frys has a tech support counter. So does Microcenter. Best Buy calls their’s the Geek Squad. So I dont think anyone is really copying anyone except whoever came up with the first tech support counter.

    You think the Apple store is the first boutique computer store? Think again. Gateway had their stores open before Apple opened their doors.

    My opinion is that Apple shouldnt call it the Genius bar. It shouldn’t take a Genius to show someone how to use what is touted as the most user friendly computer in existence. Or to repair the computer thats seems to be brought up as infallible. Applecare counter would probably be a better name.

  • Robert

    @Daniel. Great points except it seems as if Microsoft is simply making a clone of what Apple has done in the past decade which has made them quite successful in a small amount of time.

    I’m all for competition. What I’m not interested in is stores that look like stores that already exist with another name on it. Kind of lame. Give me a reason to give it a try. Otherwise why try a new Microsoft store when Apple already has the same exact store in place.

  • Harvey

    I’m wondering what the Gurus will do. They can’t fix computers, because there are too many manufacturers. They can’t fix some brands and not others, because people will get ticked off, “I dragged my computer all the way to your store and you can’t fix it like Apple would fix a Mac?” They can’t solve software problems very well, because often the problem is really a hardware problem, and no one is going to be happy being referred to someone else instead of helped. So what are the Gurus going to do, other than make people mad? Are they just going to be advising people about software purchases? And how are they going to deal with the expectation that they can do everything an Apple Genius can do?

    I can’t figure out what they are going to do, without making Microsoft’s public image even worse, but I know this: it’s one job I’m glad I won’t have.

  • Sviergn

    “Funny that you show zombies, because most mac users resemble each other. There computers look exactly the same. They all say the same things over and over again. My computer is a tool..not a lifestyle. Macs are nice, but to be honest when you weigh the pros and cons of both side, they pretty much come out equal. I dont give a rats butt as to who created what first.”

    @daniel – Is your name really Giampaolo? You forgot to say “the Mac is just about aesthetics.”

  • Harvey

    Daniel,

    There is a HUGE difference between a Gateway store and an Apple Store. The Gateway Store didn’t sell anything. I tried to buy a computer there, and all they wanted to do was help me fill out an on-line form. They didn’t help me figure out which model or configuration I needed. Then I agreed to fill out the form, but I wanted it shipped to the store instead of to my house because no one would be home to receive it. No to that too.

    I went home wondering why I bothered to drive there. One of the salespeople even tried to convince me it wasn’t a store! (I invited him to go outside and look at his sign.) I could have done everything on line. I had nothing in my trunk when I went home. I was so ticked off I bought a Dell. Only to have a Dell support representative tell me I had voided my warranty by formatting my disk as NTFS.

    I can’t imagine why anyone is surprised that a store that sold nothing didn’t succeed, and I can’t imagine what color grass Dell was smoking when they thought they could imitate a failure and succeed.

    When I go to the Apple Store, I can walk out with something in a bag and drive home with something in my trunk. The people at the Gateway Store spent all their time telling me what they couldn’t do. The people at the Apple Store don’t tell me what they can’t do, or what they can do, they just do it.

    The only thing the Gateway store had in common with the Apple Store is that they were both owned by computer manufacturers.

  • Leigh McMullen

    Harvey is dead on, what exactly will the Gurus do?
    //irony off//
    I expect the “gurus” will be less tech support, and more like the “experience” bars in apple stores where you can receive hands on training in how to use Aperture, Final Cut, and iLife and such.
    //irony on//

    I still find the concept amusing, Imagine a line of soulless zombies all learning how to do Pivot Tables in MS Excel. The place will have as much allure as a concentration camp.

  • Bill of Atlanta

    “quirky, nerdy, but still really attractive girl”…

    She has a name. It is Flo. Don’t forget that.

  • Mark

    This article is bogus. I WANT to buy another (!) Xbox 360. I WANT to buy the Zune HD the day it is released. I WANT to buy Windows 7 (running the RC now and it rocks!). Don’t necessarily WANT to spend the money on MS Office, but I do WANT (as opposed to need or require) it.

    Just because you feel as though you want everything from Apple and don’t want anything from Microsoft, doesn’t mean that nobody else does or even that you are in the majority.

  • TXCiclista

    “Dog-damned?” Are you serious? How about either swearing or just coming up with something else to say? The clever, “I’m not cussing because I actually wrote ‘dog’ instead of ‘God’” ain’t so clever.

    Still, amusing article. I’m waiting for the day a MS store opens across the walk from an Apple store and a turf war ensues. Even Crips and Bloods will be able to learn a thing or two…

  • Kyle

    Great post! I’m glad you didn’t go the serious route on this one.