If not, don't. It was one of the creepiest bloody experiences of my life. I've written up the experience in the article above, and the uncanny skin-crawling I experienced is no exaggeration. All the staff behave like body-snatching aliens doing their best impersonation of human beings.
By comparison, being ignored and disdained in an Apple store is a positive delight.
I'm afraid your piece had the opposite of your desired effect. I now have to experience this. My wife won't go in to a retail store if there isn't anyone else in it. Why? Because she can't stand it when all of the staffs attention is on her. I am the opposite, I like knowing that if i need assistance ill bot have to wait. I probably shouldn't take her with me if I ever visit a Microsoft store. I don't think I've ever seen one. They're a new thing?
One has been open here in the Twin Cities for like a year. It's at the Mall of America, and it's directly across from an Apple Store. The format and layout is also identical to an Apple Store, but with blues and green accent colors instead of white and metallic. Hilarious.I don't think I've ever seen one. They're a new thing?
That's awesome. I picture the employees walking out of each store, lined up in rows, snapping their fingers in unison and ready to rumble.
I think the one in San Francisco is new. And for the record, I'm on your wife's side. This is how I feel in shops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP-I0smgcqM
The once outside of my local mall has a big sign that says "upload a photo to facebook faster on your iPhone or Android and win a $1000 in store credit! Take the challenge!" or something along those lines. I've always wanted to just write a script that does it instantly, but I've always been too lazy (or, more like busy). It's really easy to justify not doing it because I am 99.99% sure that if I beat the employees there will be some dirty catch and I don't get the money, knowing the employees in there. Sometimes I honestly feel they aren't educated and trained for their jobs beyond information on the Xbox and Kinect, I swear.
i mean, writing a script would probably be seen as cheating in most eyes anyways, not just microsoft's.
Is it cheating though? Doesn't the ability for my Android to allow writing scripts show it's more practical for me, with the knowledge to write scripts, then a Windows Phone? Who's stopping Microsoft from allowing that ability? If I had done it, it would've been very similar to Forwardslash's article I bet. I have the Galaxy Nexus, like the guy in the article. No matter how I achieve it, if my phone (completely by itself I might add, you don't even have to go through a PC to write a simple script like this) can post faster in any way (scripts included), isn't my phone the phone that "smokes" the other phone?
i understand what you're saying, but any phone could be modified to run a script like that, including windows phones or iphones. the point of the contest is to highlight the out of the box/official feature it has. if you open up the contest in your way, then really it's just a battle of hardware specs (what device can snap a picture and upload it the fastest). im sure there are any number of ways someone could beat the system using scripts or other prepared methods, but it would be stupid of MS not to think of this before hand and put it in the fine print.
Yeah, I wouldn't waste your time with the challenge. Even those who beat similar challenges in the past only received the prize after Microsoft lost major PR points.
I went to one in Florida. It was located just a few stores down from the Apple store and was reasonably populated, but mostly by the younger crowd. There were a lot of Xbox's on and a lot of people playing them. The variety of product was pretty decent from what I noticed although I wish I'd spent some more time in there... I also visited the Apple Store couldn't bear it longer than 2 minutes -- i actually stayed longer at Microsoft.
Oh man, I just have to go to one of these stores now. But only as a curiosity - this sort of behaviour isn't going to persuade me to buy any of their products. BTW, what's the deal with the joined up st and ct 's? It looks sorta cool, some old-fashioned typographical fancy? I've never seen it before.
Everyone seems to want to visit one now! What have I done? The 'st's and 'ct's are a kind of old typographic convention. I use them because I like old books and I think they look nifty, although I'm still a bit unsure about how well they sit with modern readers. Here's an example from an old type specimen where you can see some 'ct's. There are no 'st's because they used a long s back then. I'm ſane enough not to uſe long 's's on my webſite, though. I have ſome common ſenſe.
Haha, yes I think most readers would interpret them as fs rather than ſs. I assume you're using some sort of CSS to achieve the st's and ct's, right? I think old conventions like this are a good thing to revive, it raises a few eyebrows and gets people thinking about typography. That can only be a good thing.
I do like a bit of fancy typography. I'm not a typography dork, but I know enough to appreciate it. It's very exciting that CSS and Web browsers are mature enough to support typographical features like these - and it really is just flat text + CSS. You can copy and paste the text into a text editor and you'll see discrete letters instead of a single joined-up glyph or an image.
Actually my experience was pretty cool, there was lots of people and I just played with the 4 player game thingie they had. Also tried all of the computers.