Best Buy is Ruining the Ipad.....

[HiRez]

Well that's what you get from a mass-market shovelware store like Best Buy. They had the same problem selling Macs at CompUSA. Employees tended to be Mac-hostile, and the environment was awful, the machines were really beat up (keys missing off keyboards, dirty screens), bad lighting, no software loaded to try out, etc. I distinctly remember seeing a PowerBook 520 on display there that was melted. Literally, half of it was melted into a twisted lump of plastic. Hey, I'll take two!

 

[wombat888]

My typical experience when I walk into a Best Buy in Reston VA, Sterling VA, Tysons/McLean VA or Raleigh NC is that there's an Apple area that has several Macs on display, they look fine, they work fine, and most often, customers are hanging out playing with them. I haven't asked employees there a lot of questions, because other than details about Best Buy inventory and the like, I doubt they know much more than I do about most of the products. So I can't speak to employee knowledge, but I have to say, I doubt anybody expects them to be tenured MIT professors.

It's overall a decent experience for a big box, and no worse than the experience Best Buy presents for Windows-based computers 30 feet over.

 

[Scooterman1]

Reason Number 1230805373498437 on why Best Buy has the dumbest employees EVER.

So, which store did you fit in the best? You must have thought about shopping there, in order to be there.

For some things, the Apple store just don't get it. And, you can't buy a vacuum cleaner at the Apple Store. For this, Best Buy isn't bad. It serves it's purpose. And for some things, you may find an employee quite intelligent.

 

[2002cbr600f4i]

Just because he knew the answer doesn't mean that the multitudes of general consumers who are interested in Apple products do. The fact that he threw the employee down on his face makes me glad.

Actually, it wasn't that I knew the answer... I had been researching it all morning and couldn't find a clear answer... The problem is, the answer he gave me was totally counter to EVERYTHING I had read up to that point...

Basically, I ask "What's the difference between the Core i5 and i7?" He insisted that it was the number of cores, saying that the i7 was a quad core. I pushed him on that more - "4 PHYSICAL cores, or 4 logical?" He replied Physical (and hence 8 logical.) I didn't think that was right. He insisted it was.

We pulled up the comparison page of the various Macbook Pro models and sure enough, they're both dual PHYSICAL core, 4 logical... the only differences is cache size and how high up the Speed Boost stuff will go.

Anyhow, yes, some of them are VERY good... but not all... Just because they have the black shirt on, don't expect them to be any more knowledgeable.

 

[Dammit Cubs]

So, which store did you fit in the best?

I'm a bit confused on what you are trying to say?

Obviously you should not expect that iPad will get the same level of attention from sale personnel in Best Buy as in Apple store. In Apple store they sell what 10 SKUs? In Best Buy, each employee has to take care of hundreds of different devices. Just compare cell phones: 1 in Apple store against (just guessing) 100 in Best Buy. Taking this into account, I'd say best Buy is doing excellent job.

So it's not about how they don't have alot of SKU and don't sell anywhere comparable to the Apple store. But It's about brand recognition. Alot of people come into best buy, a lot don't end of buying a Mac product but its on the shelfs and it's display. I was there yesterday to pick up a netbook bag and I'm looking at the ipad games. The one on the right had decked out ipad games. the one on the left of me had basically all iphone games. they were even the same software on each Ipad, you can blame that on apple. But when a girl walks into best buy this is what I heard....

girl 1....."oh this is the ipad"
girl 2....."oh I want it!!!"
Girl 1....*starts opening apps (iphone apps)* "hahaha its like a big iphone!, what games are you playing?"
girl 2...."none? I'm trying to be productive on it hahaha"


Basically, girl 1 and girl 2 had two different impressions on what software they chose. And there was a best buy girl at the apple area at all times, he needs to do a better job of selling product and guiding them through....

 

[soxfanreggie]

My local (Wilmington NC) BB store seems to have pretty much just the standard set of iPad apps installed. The home page looks populated by about 6 or so icons. Maybe I should 'help' them and install a couple iPhone games?

The employee at the kiosk is wearing the trademark black polo shirt and white "Apple" logo. Seems friendly and well informed about Apple product.

fwiw.

The person in Sarasota (the Apple expert as I'll call her) knew her stuff and was very helpful. Besides the apps mentioned, they also had some news apps and some other games/entertainment apps on there.

 

[wombat888]

fwiw, the key differences between i5 and i7 are that i7 has hyperthreading and triple-channel memory. It's the traditional decision point ... if you a) do CPU-intensive tasks, b) don't care about a few hundred bucks, c) some combination of the two ... go with an i7.

Hyperthreading means two logical cores for each physical core. My i7-based computer shows eight cores.

/ off-topic info