{"id":2869,"date":"2009-02-15T18:20:46","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T01:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnightowl.com\/?p=2869"},"modified":"2009-02-15T18:23:22","modified_gmt":"2009-02-16T01:23:22","slug":"newsletter-481-preview-about-the-dumb-things-microsoft-can-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technightowl.live\/blog\/2009\/02\/newsletter-481-preview-about-the-dumb-things-microsoft-can-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Newsletter #481 Preview: About the Dumb Things Microsoft Can Do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes it seems that Apple and other companies can&#8217;t produce products or services that Microsoft won&#8217;t try to imitate. Take the recent reports about plans to create a &#8220;Microsoft Store,&#8221; in a lame effort to duplicate the success of The Apple Store.<\/p>\n<p>Now instead of hiring someone familiar with the sophisticated inner-workings of a retail chain that will provide a superior user experience, they select someone who had spent 25 years working for Wal-Mart.<\/p>\n<p>Now despite Wal-Mart&#8217;s undeniable success as the number one retailer in the U.S., you can hardly call the shopping experience elegant. Serviceable, yes. Efficient, too, I suppose. But I would hardly call their marketing strategy adequate to provide a comfortable environment where Microsoft users can hang out and buy the cutting-edge gear they crave.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d think that if Microsoft&#8217;s erratic CEO, Steve Ballmer, would maybe spend a few days hanging out at an Apple Store, taking notes, and digital photos, he&#8217;d learn a lot more about the buying experience than what he might discover from someone who cut his retail teeth at a discount chain.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s just me.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Wait! There's more than meets the eye!\" href=\"http:\/\/www.technightowl.live\/newsletter\/2009\/02\/newsletter-issue-481\/#me\">Story continued in this week&#8217;s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes it seems that Apple and other companies can&#8217;t produce products or services that Microsoft won&#8217;t try to imitate. Take the recent reports about plans to create a &#8220;Microsoft Store,&#8221; in a lame effort to duplicate the success of The Apple Store. Now instead of hiring someone familiar with the sophisticated inner-workings of a retail [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[485,712,8727,10297,1635,443,40,138,8152,9432,8165,1239],"class_list":["post-2869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-apple-store","tag-ceo","tag-environment","tag-experience","tag-marketing","tag-microsoft","tag-newsletter","tag-steve-ballmer","tag-strategy","tag-success","tag-us","tag-wal-mart"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Newsletter #481 Preview: About the Dumb Things Microsoft Can Do - Gene Steinberg&#039;s Tech Night Owl<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technightowl.live\/blog\/2009\/02\/newsletter-481-preview-about-the-dumb-things-microsoft-can-do\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Newsletter #481 Preview: About the Dumb Things Microsoft Can Do - Gene Steinberg&#039;s Tech Night Owl\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sometimes it seems that Apple and other companies can&#8217;t produce products or services that Microsoft won&#8217;t try to imitate. 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