I mean really – do you get worked up over the almost identical look and feel of a pair of jeans? The blatant copying, duplication of features and outright theft of IP in the car industry? Sportswear? Restaurants?

What is it about Apple that makes you so endeared and blinded to their own plagiarization of everything from the GUI to the chipsets?

Good retail design is good retail design.

It’s just that – a retail store. Nothing to foam or forment and get your panties into a twist over. Seriously, consider actually looking into the retail industry – check out how many stores are copying each other’s layouts and designs. Wow. Not really news.

And the negativity about school attendance loss – please, most of us aren’t idiots.

Try being less left-handed sometime. :-)

The burner is listed in the article in the table.

99.9% of the same DNA? You obviously don’t do much research. Check the following article to see what Fortune says about Apple’s retail store.

While this article compares the construction of the stores, you might want to check out Microsoft’s prior FAILED attempt at a retail store (without Apple Stores to copy), and MS’s intentions with their new store:
http://obamapacman.com/2009/10/microsoft-tries-to-copy-apple-store-scottsdale-az-store-opening-reveals-extent-of-blatant-plagiarism/

Apple’s innovation is bringing elements that wasn’t used for technology sales and making it work.

Yes Apple doesn’t have all the answers, and there are always room for improvement, but it’s sad to see MS thinking Apple’s way is the only way to make it work.

I’m also a big fan of ifoAppleStore and find your content very insightful and valuable, but I was quite disappointed with this article. It would have been fine if you skipped covering the MS store. But since you choose to do it, you should have done so up to your usual standards.

Is it really an important point that promotional concert may or may not have encouraged some truancy? I’ve never seen an article about the far larger negative impact to US productivity during a Steve Jobs keynote or an IPhone phone launch. Given how many more kids are in line for significantly longer periods of time for every Hanna Montana Concert, I can only assume you consider her to be public enemy #1? It just seems irrelevant to the article.

Also the Apple vs. Microsoft chart is just silly. Use your exact same criteria and add a third column for the GAP and I think you’ll be embarrassed. Unless your point is that all retail from the very best to the very worst share 99.9% of the same DNA, much like humans.

Also, you guys did a disappointing job covering the store in anything but superficial detail. I.E. I found the video wall (which you at least mentioned) to be quite impressive, to me it was the major architectural element of the store and quite distinctive from anything Apple does.

You mentioned the Surface units, which I’d give a mixed reviews. They seem to be a cool novelty which people are fascinated by, but the apps on them were totally disjointed from the retail store, and didn’t really seem to add anything to the shopping experience.

You didn’t mention that in addition to merchandising physical software, the store featured digital software distribution with the ability to burn a deep catalog of titles onto physical media. You didn’t mention the Skin-It zone with the ability to make all kinds of custom physical and digital enhancements for various CE devices, some of which (wallpapers, screen savers, ring tones, etc..) were exclusive for retail shoppers.

You could have legitimately made some more critical comments about other aspects of the execution. I.E. While not atypical for a new retailer, I thought the stores just felt not quite ready. I.E. Staff was “mostly” trained, the experiences “mostly” worked, etc… Apple has the benefit of a much more stable/established execution model for their stores, but on day one of a new Apple store opening, I find things to be pretty rock solid.

Anyway, I really appreciate your writing, and I hope the coverage of these stores is a bit of an anomaly for you.

It will be interesting to see whether the stores keep generating any interest. If it takes several years for them to announce their next non-crap OS, they may be in trouble. The hardware makers are already everywhere. Why go to one of these stores when you can grab the same thing down the street, likely cheaper?

That said, I guess the best thing about this for Windows consumers is that they will finally be able to actually go to a store and find laptops, Zunes, etc., that are actually turned on and have access to working, full-featured versions of Windows 7 and the internet, etc. I cant tell you how many times I’ve tried to explore the Zune only to find a non-operating device at Staples or Best Buys. Nothing ever works.

Office Depot, Best Buys, Staples and all of the other retailers need to realize that customers want to use and test drive a product before they purchase. So what f people come into a store and check their email or an eBay auction? It’s not like anyone is going to park themselves in a store and run a business from Aisle 5.

Hey fact expert, sounds like you’re the one who needs to do some research. Saddleback has less than Capo’s 51,000 students by several thousand and the MV Mall is geographically deeper inside Capo than Saddleback. So your numbers and proximity argument fails on both counts.