Published on: December 4, 2009
I don’t know about you, but if I were running Microsoft’s new retail division, with plans to open up stores all over the country, this is the last way I’d want to see one my new units described:
Blink an eye, and the Microsoft Store could be mistaken for an Apple Store.
The sign over the doorway has no letters, only a Windows logo instead of an Apple silhouette. Wood bar tables display desktops and laptops, and Zunes and Windows Mobile phones replace iPods and iPhones. The walls are painted stark white to showcase the products. Where Apple store have customer-service areas called "Genius Bars," Microsoft's have "Answer Bars" at the back.
Staff wear Apple-style shirts in primary hues. Staff members may even look familiar; some were recruited from Apple stores.That was the description offer by the
Seattle Times of the new Microsoft store in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Now, I realize I am totally in the tank for Apple, never having worked on a Windows-based machine. Not ever. But it seems to me that when Microsoft decided to follow Apple into the retail business, it needed to create an environment that was different from the now familiar Apple Stores. After all, its very entry into retail was seen as a “me, too” effort.
So what it needed to do, at least in my view, was come up with something that would remind people of the Apple Store. Because that, al by itself, would remind people of the competition.
To quote one of Apple’s old commercials, what Microsoft needed to do was “think different.”
But apparently it didn’t.
Now here’s an interesting story from
Reuters Life, reporting that a new Swedish study says that “men who bottle up their anger at being unfairly treated at work are up to five times more likely to suffer a heart attack, or even die from one, than those who let their frustration show.”
In other words, letting it all hang out may not always be socially acceptable, but it is the right thing to do...medically speaking.
Which probably is what Tiger Woods’ wife was thinking as she advanced on the Escalade while wielding a golf club....that this was going to be good for health. If not necessarily for Tiger’s.
Tony Kornheiser is back on the radio, with a local morning show in Washington, DC, which also is streamed on the internet and can be heard on iTunes. This week, with both the Tiger Woods situation and the adventures of Michaele and Tareq Salahi to talk about, he has been in rare form.
I was listening to his Monday show on Tuesday, driving home from a speaking engagement in Boston, and was laughing so hard that I didn’t even notice that the fuel warning light was on in my car...and finally had to coast downhill to make it to a gas station.
Now that’s good radio.
Mrs. Content Guy and I, joined by our 15-year-old daughter, had the great opportunity to go to the second-to-last concert in Jimmy Buffett’s Summerzcool tour, at the Mohegan Sun in upstate Connecticut. as always, we had a great time - Jimmy was loose and funny and played for well over two and a half hours...it just doesn’t get any better than that.
Amid all the shaky economic news, there was a bit of relief this week. Apparently, if you actually give all the items listen in “The 12 Days of Christmas,” it will cost you $21,465.56 this year...up just 1.8 percent compared to a year ago.
PNC Financial Services says that there was a 27 percent decrease in the cost of a partridge and a pear tree, which you now can get for a mere $159, and there has been no change in the $4,413 it costs for 10 leaping lords.
One big price hike: the cost of five gold rings is up 42 percent.
My wines of the week:
• the 2003 Barnard Griffin Reserve Merlot, from Washington State’s Columbia Valley, which is extraordinarily smooth and wonderful.
the 2007 Atteca “Old Vines” from Spain, which is bright and juicy without being sweet...just fantastic.
That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend...I know I will, because I’m going with my best friend to the New England Patriots-Miami Dolphins game at Landshark Stadium. (You know me. How could I let the season go by without visiting the stadium named for jimmy Buffett’s beer?)
See you Monday.
Slainte!