This is just downright cartoonish. In an attempt to stay relevant, Microsoft, as you’re probably already aware, has been at work opening a chain of retail stores to do battle in the IRL with Jobs and Friends.
But this is perhaps no bigger a pissing contest than in the Mall of America, where Microsoft is opening a store less than ten meters away from the Apple Store – directly across the hallway.
I’d really like to see how this turns out. The new Microsoft store is utterly enormous (as you’ll see in the video below), and it will be interesting to hear tell of how – or if – Redmond’s presence affect’s Apple’s sales.
I can see it now: Apple’s ‘Geniuses’ folding their arms and glaring across the hallway at Microsoft’s … ‘Experts’, or whatever they end up calling their employees (do they already have a name?), who glare back in kind. What I’d really like to see, though, is all sorts of Spy Vs. Spy shenanigans happening between the stores. If life were only like that.
So what’s the word? Does MS’s third-party offerings stand a chance against Apple’s walled-garden glitz? Personally, I think the me-too aura of this store project may hurt Microsoft a bit in the beginning, but what do I know – I haven’t been to the mall in weeks.
Its going to get vicious but could work.
Seems appropriate.
The problem with the MS vs Apple throw-down concept is that MS makes a pretty penny off Apple users to, so overall being across from each other will just create a halo effect for both stores. There is plenty of MS software AND hardware that works on Apple products; including Windows. I guess people just like to make it look like more than it is.
Everything Microsoft does these days is so embarrassing to watch. How pathetic.
yes because apple were the first company with a retail store
Oh the irony. LOL!!!
A Microsoft store right across from the Microsoft “Future Products” development center.
They could call the employees the “Microsoft Tools”!