EDIT: Well, it looks like the joke's on me. Turns out that BBSpot is a satire/humor website. I did not know this. Now I know. And knowing is half the battle. (GI Joe...)

So, boys and girls, today's Life Lesson for the Digital Age is this: do not always believe what you read on the internets. Or at least, check your sources VERY carefully.

I'm leaving my original rant-y post up (below), partly for humor's sake (go ahead and laugh at the gullible fool...), and partly to remind me of the above life lesson.

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When I first read this BBSpot story, I had to check my computer's clock several times, just to make sure that I didn't somehow fall through some sort of Star Trek-like temporal anomaly/wormhole/whatever that led back to April Fool's Day.

It seems that Apple Stores have become very popular as of late. People have been visiting them in droves to check out all of those cool Apple products. Especially in the past few weeks, huge crowds of people have been clustering around the iPhone displays at Apple Stores.

You'd think that a company such as Apple would be GLAD to have publicity of this magnitude, that they would eagerly welcome the curious, unwashed masses. "Come forth! Gaze in awe and wonder at our glorious products!! (Oh, and by the way, if you like what you see, cashiers are standing by for your convenience!)" Because, after all, those curious unwashed masses are but one credit card swipe away from becoming potential CUSTOMERS. Or, even if they don't buy something, they will surely tell their friends about how cool those shiny Apple products are, and one or three of THEM might come in and buy something.

No. Instead, they want to start charging entrance fees for the privilege of merely WALKING INTO AN APPLE STORE.

WHAT THE HEY??!!

To me, this makes about as much sense as, oh, I dunno, strapping wings onto an elephant. Apple is a retail establishment. I always thought that, in general, retail establishments WANT customers to come visit them. I dunno, it just seems so common-sense-ish to me. Customers generate sales, but even more important than that, they also generate BUZZ. Even if someone does NOT buy an iPhone, he/she will tell their friends, blog, MySpace, Twitter/Jaiku, etc. about how they went to an Apple Store and finally got to play with an iPhone and OMGWTFBBQ HOW COOL IT IS!! and so forth. Others will hear of this and then they too will get interested, and maybe even buy the product. Boom, domino effect.

The article quotes Vince Sciopiano, vice president of retail outlets, as saying that part of the reason for this decision was to institute a kind of crowd control. I call BS. Apple are EXPERTS at crowd control. I have been to many high-profile Apple events, including the grand opening of several Apple Stores (including the flagship San Francisco Union Square store) as well as several high-profile Apple product introductions (iPods, OS X 10.3 Panther, etc.). At all of these events, Apple demonstrated their supreme knowledge of crowd control techniques and kept a large unruly bunch of Mac-heads firmly in line, both literally and figuratively. They know what they doing.

It's true that Apple Stores do have problems with loitering. They purposefully leave their demo machines unlocked and with all capabilities enabled, including Internet access. This leads to some people coming in just to check their email or whatever. Apple is starting to combat this; for example, they recently started blocking access to MySpace, so you don't see teenaged girls updating their MySpace pages any more. I always thought that they should start putting some sort of "nag message" on their computers; say, every 15 minutes, it interrupts what you're doing and starts playing a random Apple commercial as well as putting up a message saying something like "Please respect the needs of others; don't hog this computer" or something like that. I think if Apple starts implementing steps such as all of the above, then the loitering problem will be licked, or at least reduced to the point where it causes minimal impact.

But charging an access fee for the stores? Bad move.

Finally, there are a lot of people in this world who are put off by Apple and its legions of loyal fans. Because of the devotion and zeal of Apple fanboys/fangirls, and how the extreme among them tend to slam and bash anyone and anything that doesn't agree with their worldview, Apple is seen by many as a kind of elitist, members-only club or cult. If Apple started charging "admission fees" to their stores temples, that would only help to further this misperception. And Vince's line about "...keep[ing] the right kind of people in the stores" only adds to that.

BAD IDEA, APPLE! BAD, BAD, BAD IDEA!!!

Tags: apple, baka, cult, cult of mac, iphone, mac, stupid
Current Mood: angry