Opinion: Think different

Posted on 6 Nov 2009 at 14:21

 

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Apple's 'Think Different' campaign was largely credited with saving the company's fortunes.

The company's decision to follow its slogan has been incredibly successful: the iPod is leagues ahead of other MP3 players in terms of use, while the iPhone is the fastest and easiest-to-use touchscreen phone, and it showed the world how multi-touch gestures could really be used.

The question is, does Apple really need to 'Think Different' everywhere? I recently had the misfortune of going to the Apple Store in central London. In my defence, I didn't want to, but HMV didn't have the iPod Touch I wanted and I hadn't the time to order online.

If you haven't been in an Apple Store before it's a lot like walking into a living, breathing Ikea catalogue. Rather than having shelves full of products that you can pick up and buy - some would say this 'feature' is a hallmark of what makes a shop a shop - there are cafe-style tables with Apple products on display.

Apple's philosophy is that rather than simply buying something, you should sit down at a table and have a nice chat with the finely manicured store employees about which of Apple's three products (Mac, iPod or iPhone) you'd like to buy.

The reason for this is that most of the people shopping in the store seem to be total idiots who need to talk to an Apple person for a couple of hours before they feel comfortable enough to buy one of the aforementioned three products. This leaves nobody free to tell you that if you know what you want, you have to queue up at the front desk where all the stock is kept - although you don't know if what you want is in stock until you reach the till.

In essence, Thinking Different has made the Apple Store terms a bit like a crap Argos without the stock-checking computers. It's not helped by the fact that the queue is populated by the same idiots who have just had a very long chat, and are now slowing you down.

Take, for example, the man I stood behind, whose baffling, but amusing conversation at the till went something like this.

"I'd like to buy an iMac," says the man.

"Which would you like?" replies the Apple man (no doubt, invisibly rubbing his hands).

"The metal one," pipes the man.

"Like these ones?" says the Apple man pointing at the iMacs they use for tills.

"No," says the man, neurones warming up a little. "I'd like the metal fold-up one, please."

The Apple man looks a bit confused, and then the key to his customer's fractured logic slowly dawns on him: "Do you mean the MacBook?"

Life imitating art? It looks as though Apple's customers really do 'Think Different'.

Author: David Ludlow