I visited my local Best Buy yesterday (I saw Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer, Best Buy is just around the corner from the theater), and was surprised to see that they had a beautiful 24″ iMac on display. I of course went over and started playing with it, and noticed an iPod HiFi next to it, apparently acting as the speakers for the iMac. Didn’t know you could do this. The most curious thing was an open iPod box right in front of the HiFi, with naught but the headphones left. I left it alone, and continued playing with the iMac.
An employee quickly came over and cleared away the box, and then asked me “You aren’t going to mess up the display, right?”
Now, what the hell does that mean? I’m using an iMac 24″, minding my own business, and the guy thinks I’m going to break something. I was insulted, so I said “Of course not” and walked away.
Of course, noticing the macbook display made me stop and check them out. Of course, a brand new gen. 3 macbook pro, and two macbooks next to it, one white and one black. So I played around with them as well, noticed that they had had their batteries removed…Bad move with the macbooks, since the power cords are designed to come out easily. Jostle it too much and the computer loses its only source of power, there goes the demo. Anyway, they were very snappy, as is to be expected. The MBP was right next to a hulking monstrosity of a PC laptop, an inch thick with a huge, useless, led-ridden emblem right under the fuzzy trackpad. Eew.
So at that point I was wondering if they had the Mini and Pro on display as well, and then I saw them. Not the Mini and Pro, but the cheap printouts of said computers propped up in plastic photo holders. With pricetags under them. Seriously, it looks like instead of putting one on display, they just googled it and printed out a picture. It wasn’t even photo paper. Just plain letter paper, with cheap ink. I sincerely hope that these are placeholders, not the final displays. It’s depressing to look at them.
So props for the apple displays and selling apple stuff, but minus about a million for lame displays and kleptomaniac employees