Stopped at the Eden Prairie, MN Best Buy store yesterday and was pleased to see several Macintoshes mixed in with the PCs. I’ve known for some time that there was a rollout occurring, but the reality of seeing it was disappointing.

The MacBooks were already dirty with body oil. Like a car dealer that has people whose job it is to clean the cars and keep fingerprints off of them, why doesn’t Best Buy do the same thing with ALL their computers? The sales staff was surprisingly clueless about the Macs (an off day perhaps?) and had only heard vague rumblings that the Macs could run both Mac OS X, Windows and Linux using Parallels or Boot Camp and thought my description of multi-OS use was pretty cool (hmmm….shouldn’t that be a major selling feature?).

The visual merchandising of Macintoshes wasn’t even close to the “Apple mini store” as shown and discussed in this post. The Macs were scattered all over.

This new store in Eden Prairie is apparently a showcase store just down the road from Best Buy’s headquarters and they use it for VIP tours and the like. It’s a fine location, well merchandised, but I find that — like most Best Buy stores I go in to — I know more than the floor people about most of the products they carry.

While cluelessness about Macs may be understandable since this rollout is so new (though preparing in advance would’ve been prudent), it shouldn’t extend to products they’ve carried for some time. Also, Best Buy needs a “Geek Stand” like Apple’s “Genius Bar” with a twist…

[Read more...]