Someone was kind enough to send Gizmodo an internal presentation of the proposal for what the Microsoft retail experience might look like. I checked out the slides and think it looks like, well a mix of Apple, Sony Style and AT&T…pretty much as they probably planned. OH, and they had referenced Nike in the presentation as well, maybe that’s where the hang from ceiling panels came from.

OK, most people know I am an Apple fan and have a macbook pro, macbook, 2 iphones (3 GS 32 GB), ipods (actually my family has MANY ipods going back to the first gen) and even an airport extreme wireless router. BUT I also have windows desktops (my gaming machine i build kicks!) and a couple of windows based laptops as well. So while I like apple products I do use windows based machines as well and an not a microsoft hater. Xbox 360 kicks ass and I can tolerate Vista (once I disabled all those warnings). So my take on Microsoft’s retail experience is from a potential customer and not some apple fanboy who can’t see past their dislike of MSFT.

First Microsoft, show some originality please! It looks like a buffet if this and that from all the competitive stores and doesn;t have a personality of its own. There’s no soul, no single emotional experience that I will remember and be different from the others. Figure out what that single, emotional experience you want people to remember and design the store around that.

Second, please don’t call it an Answer bar, Guru bar or anything “bar”. Unless you’re serving drinks a bar is not something I associate with helping me fix my PC problems or undestand how to accomplish something (I also don’t like Apple’s narcistic genius bar name…they’re not all that smart). Think of a place where people go to get problems solved.

Lastly, pls ease up on the video walls. Don’t do the entire store. Absolutely have a section to for this and provide users with an emmersive experience. But not the entire store.
Well these are my thoughts on Microsoft’s retail effort. I’m interested in what it finally looks like.

Thanks Gizmodo for breaking the story and letting me “borrow” your pics

Clich here to go to the Gizmodo story.