Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/26/microsoft-to-permanently-close.html
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Microsoft had retail stores?
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Gone too zune. They’re with Clippy now.
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The crowd disparity between the MS Store and the adjacent Apple store in my nearby mall was well something foreshadowing for MS.
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“There will be no layoffs, Microsoft reports …”
How can that be? Did they already lay everyone off when they temporarily shut down for C19? Or are they keeping everyone on staff, maybe moving them to Redmond?
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What if Linux had a store. A few laptops, maybe a phone or two but then a wall of software, FREE!
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I will memorialize them with this insane Zune ad from 2006.
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Apropos of nothing, but the Apple Store in Portland, OR has become an impromptu shrine for George Floyd et al.
Meanwhile, just a block down the street, the Microsoft Store is an indistinguishable boarded up store front.
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Tha fuq was that?!
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Kinda awesome
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So what’s the opposite of “Apple Genius Bar”? 
Man…
I went to the one in Valley Fair Mall, in Santa Clara. It’s practically opposite the Apple Store there, and the attendance difference just made you cringe.
Apple created their Apple Stores because Steve Jobs wanted to be able to demonstrate their products on their own terms, not be relegated to a aisle-end display at CompUSA (RIP) or whatever. It turned out to be a brilliant decision, superbly executed.
Clearly, Microsoft saw that it was good, and tried to execute as well, but Microsoft does not have the cohesive vision that Apple has. They use it to demonstrate the Xbox, and a variety of third-party laptops. That… kinda misses the point: they just turned themselves into reverse CompUSA?
Even then, I went in once hoping to try out Dell XPS 13 & 15, or Lenovo X1 Carbon, which are arguably the most well-regarded Windows laptops out there, and they didn’t have any to demonstrate.
What was the point?
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It’s not clear that they ever grasped the point; but had they been more aggressive about using the retail presence as front line tech support(at least for Surface devices; could probably easily enough arrange co-tech setups with the relatively modest set of PC OEMs who matter in terms of marketshare) the way Apple does that could have been helpful.
To put it politely, Microsoft’s depot and phone/remote support
(I’m not going to tell the story here; because it’s actually pretty boring; but there was one occasion where, after a couple of weeks of blaming drivers and having me reinstall the operating system, Microsoft Support sent me a model 1708 Xbox One controller, in arctic camo, as a ‘replacement’ for a defective Surface Dock, because those are definitely equivalent. It was not impressive)
for Surface devices is smoldering hot garbage. To some degree the failure to match over PC OEMs is understandable(both because of inexperience; and because sending a tech out is pretty useless when everything is soldered to the mainboard and the case literally can’t be opened nodestructively); but it still means that if your Surface widget has issues you get to be SOL for a while; which is exactly the context where Apple’s “take it to the Apple store, if in range” option is so attractive.
Particularly given their consumer focus; and their attempt to push “Microsoft Managed Desktop” and Windows Autopilot" as alternatives to the traditional “IT images gear and hands it out” model; having readily accessible repair/swap hubs seems like it could have been a real boon.
It certainly has been for Apple. By traditional corporate standards their support options are pretty garbage; but (if you live in the vicinity of an Apple store) the experience is miles ahead of depot-based home user ‘support’ as provided by the various PC OEMs.
A “Linux is a Cancer Kiosk”? 
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Yeah. They were OK. Basically Apple store clones with MSFT merch. They had Xbox stuff, but were less satisfying than a Gamestop, they had laptops but less variety than Best Buy, they had PC stuff but… Less variety than Best Buy.
Nothing really stood out about the store. I never felt the desire to go in and gawk.
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Just going to let you know, that while it’s still self-serving, MSFT has bought into the Linux ecosystem in a huge way.
Large parts of Azure run on Linux and NGINX.
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someone please get a shot of the shuttered virgin zune store next to the chad apple store in the stanford mall. thank you kindly
With their visionary leadership they’ve reinvented themselves. But don’t forget they funded SCO who attempted to drown Linux in a bathtub for the better part of a decade. Microsoft’s openly killed businesses and stifled Innovation for most of its existence, so this is a welcome change of direction.
