They'll care about you enough to get your money, then stop all assistance. We've seen this before.

Oh, and I'm sure this has nothing to do with Apple's Genius Bars. It's part of a $300M campaign that is admitted to be a response to Apple's own ads, and yet Nordstrom, not Apple, is its inspiration. Riiiight.

"They'll care about you enough to get your money, then stop all assistance". That sounds like just about every corporation I've ever dealt with. ;P I tried to get help on iTunes with a billing problem for weeks with no luck.

"Microsoft's pros will only help with pre-sale questions. . .'

That is so lame then. Then again they can't really provide Mac Genius-type support because half of their responses will probably be "That's a hardware issue, talk to the manufacturer".

Why should Microsoft provide support after a purchase? I mean, how many gurus does it take to tell a customer..."Uhhh, I guess you need to wipe the hard drive and reinstall the operating system."

Microsoft Gurus? Hahahahahahahahaha. It's strikes me as oddly appropriate since all their technical support is being handled out of India.

Microsoft sucks...

small flaccid

Microsoft Sucks!! All they do is copy. Come up with your own ideas!! Bill Gates is just a duplicator, he started out as one and is still one, not one creative drop in him.

Image of being not customer centered company? Intel corp rolledback their OS to Xp from Vista. Dell offered XP as an option for their PCs in response to customers and yet Microsoft continues to push vista and will cease support on XP although they recently extended it. MS should start listening not ad campaigning.

When will they start offering a MS Store?

Bill Gates for President!

The so called 'MS-Gurus' can't provide post-purchase support because that would create conflicts of interests with both Best Buy's 'Geek Squad' and Circuit City's 'Fire Dog' (or something like that) in-store support services.

Microsoft is too full of themselves. To them it's all about the money and has always been just that. A typical mindless corporate for profit mentality.
On the other hand,.......
Apple Has customer service that is out of this world and their products are intuitive and people friendly.
Obama '08

Microsoft creates problems, doesn't offer solutions. Then dump Vista and install Ubuntu. Simple. Maybe I am the Guru.

..

Just what we need another annoying salesman in the floor. Whats next a maytag guru for appliances?

It would be cool if it was an Amiga Guru (A Guru Meditation was an error message similar to the blue screen of death in the Amiga operating system), but not a microsoft thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Meditation

"Think of that as borrowing a page from Nordstrom with that retail customer experience," said Microsoft in 2008

So in other words, Microsoft is again* "not" copying Apple; they're alleging that they're BOTH copying someone else. Why does Microsoft always copy the letter of the idea without the spirit? At least Nordsrom has *class*...


* Need more historical context? I'll save you the google:

"I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it," said Bill Gates in 1983.

Please choose the answer that best represent the following analogy

Apple is at innovation as M$ is at

1) Rip off
2) Evil
3) Monopolistic practices
4) Copy cat
5) All of the above

I would not call a salesman a Guru. If the best Microsoft can do is offer pre-sales help then what the heck is the purpose in this whole exercise. The need to get a grip on reality and realize that their OS is pure junk and they should just get a Mac and OS X!!!

"To them it's all about the money and has always been just that. A typical mindless corporate for profit mentality."

Soooo, how does Apple differ in any way? Capitalism anyone? Idiot.

I wonder who Microsoft Gurus will behave towards the Apple section of Best Buy. Will it turn into a "Spy vs. Spy" kind of thing, with ever escalating pranks? Or will the gurus end up tackling every customer heading towards the Macs and drag them over to the windows section?

It's been there for years - mostly logo stuff. MS Software for employees only.
https://shop.ecompanystore.com/microsoft/MIC_login.asp

Supporting and answering questions for a perfectly configured new machine, before the sale, is useless! What a waste of $300M! I still want the Churro though!

And they doubtless had something to say about Microsoft installing competition for GeekSquad in their own stores, since they own GeekSquad.

Please put the "Genius" part of Apple Genius in quotes from now on. I have dealt with a handful of these "Geniuses" before, and let me tell you - even 5 of these guys put together barely makes a "Halfwit".

uhhh.... so is steve jobs.... hello GUI... or how about the mouse? Xerox PARC anyone?

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Guest wrote:
uhhh.... so is steve jobs.... hello GUI... or how about the mouse? Xerox PARC anyone?

How many times does this lie need to be repeated as truth. Steve Jobs didn't steal the mouse and the GUI interface from PARC. First of all, SPJ was part of a team that visited PARC, and the engineer who was most inspired by the mouse and GUI was none other than Jef Raskin, who ended up visiting for three consecutive days. Second of all, Apple (like many other companies) paid for the right to visit PARC and use the fruits of that visit. Apple paid one million dollars in pre-IPO stock for the rights to the PARC visit.

Yes, Xerox sued Apple over the mouse and GUI, and that suit was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired - but it is also very unlikely that it would have been decided in Xerox's favor anyway.

Apple Geniuses = McCain/Palin
GOP = Snow Leopard: fast with little overhead

Microsoft Gurus = Obama/Biden
Democrats = Windows Vista: Pretty to look at but bloated and unable to modernize

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Guest wrote:
uhhh.... so is steve jobs.... hello GUI... or how about the mouse? Xerox PARC anyone?

For those who have enough attention span and is more interested in facts than myths, feel free to read more about this here:

http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html

For Guru- read sales guy.

Hope they get pounded by un-happy blue and red screen of death PC owners.

You have a person trying to pre-empt problems you will have with your software before you buy it?!

Not sure that if I walked into a Crysler garage and saw a mechanics desk to help me out with the pre-sale of my new car it would fill me with a great deal of confidence!!!

Oh please...anyone with technical knowledge isn't going to work at Best Buy when they can make real $$ somewhere else. Nor is Microsoft going to send savy techs to retailers on their dime. I've owned Microsoft stock since 97' and had grief with Windows until XP arrived. I love it. I'm not pleased with hoggy Vista. My three XPs work fine. But I'm going over to the dark side and buying either an iMac or MacBook.

Once again, Microsoft reminds us of something small and limp.

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Anonymous wrote:
"To them it's all about the money and has always been just that. A typical mindless corporate for profit mentality."

Soooo, how does Apple differ in any way? Capitalism anyone? Idiot.

You neglect to give the poster's "all about" and "just that" the weight intended. In other words, Microsoft has always been merely about the money, while Apple has made its name based on initiative, innovation, and a much higher level of real aesthetic appeal, and of course, one of the consistently best rated customer support services in the history of the industry.

And that's how Apple differs in many ways, Idiot.

There Microsoft goes again, with their own version of innovation.

Quote

For those who have enough attention span and is more interested in facts than myths, feel free to read more about this here:

http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html

That site is bunk, full of inaccuracies about the people involved, it's especially inaccurate regarding Xerox PARC and the Alto; the tenets of that system (including the desktop metaphor) were in place as early as 1972, with production beginning in 1973 - well before Apple was even founded let alone before Apple's "visit".

I don't believe there was any "theft" of PARC's work involved, but that's no reason to lie and devalue the work of the giants whose shoulders Apple's GUI work stands. The people working at PARC were geniuses, turning Douglas Englebart's NLS conceot into a production machine; One with a tilt-and-swivel hi-resolution display, a GUI, a mouse, a detached keyboard, and Ethernet based server and client networking. In 1973!

We ALL owe Xerox PARC a huge debt of gratitude for what we have in front of us, but we need to remember that without the likes of Apple and 3Com taking their ideas and running with them (in the business sense) we wouldn't have had access these technologies as early.[/quote]

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Anonymous wrote:

Quote

For those who have enough attention span and is more interested in facts than myths, feel free to read more about this here:

http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html

That site is bunk, full of inaccuracies about the people involved, it's especially inaccurate regarding Xerox PARC and the Alto; the tenets of that system (including the desktop metaphor) were in place as early as 1972, with production beginning in 1973 - well before Apple was even founded let alone before Apple's "visit".

I don't believe there was any "theft" of PARC's work involved, but that's no reason to lie and devalue the work of the giants whose shoulders Apple's GUI work stands. The people working at PARC were geniuses, turning Douglas Englebart's NLS conceot into a production machine; One with a tilt-and-swivel hi-resolution display, a GUI, a mouse, a detached keyboard, and Ethernet based server and client networking. In 1973!

We ALL owe Xerox PARC a huge debt of gratitude for what we have in front of us, but we need to remember that without the likes of Apple and 3Com taking their ideas and running with them (in the business sense) we wouldn't have had access these technologies as early.

[/quote]

Do you have any verified links to anything that supports your assertion that the site is "bunk"? Just curious, because that site was pretty well referenced (although the reference page seems to be gone) and concurs with statements ant writings from Wosniak and Raskin, among others.