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February 24, 2008
Healthy Economy vs. Tech that Everyone Wants
posted by ari
I was in the Lake Tahoe area in California this weekend. I needed some Apple gear so I thought I would look for the nearest Apple store. To my surprise, there is one 10 miles south of Reno's strip on US395 in Nevada.
A snow storm had just rolled in to the area and a foot was falling in a scant handful of hours. The amazing thing is the Apple Store was packed with people--more than in the flagship store in San Francisco on any given weekend day!
Everyone was so focused on finding stuff to buy, a lady started peppering my wife with questions about the camera we used to take this picture. "Which one is it?" "Where is it in the store?" "How much is it?" "I really would prefer a black camera as opposed to a silver one. It looks so cool."
Apple must be doing very well when a city without a significant concentration of hi tech companies can fill the Apple store. Furthermore, we met someone who was in the process of dumping all their Dell / Windows equipment because they were "sick of viruses and slowdowns." They bought a Macbook Pro, an iMac, and 2 iPhones in a single trip. I asked if the Apple push was due to work-needs or personal preference. It was the latter.
So now I ask myself the question: "is this a sign that the economy is strong?" Well, I doubt it. I think that Apple has simply now reached ubiquity (for iPod, iPhone, etc. Mac not so much). It is something everyone wants!
Apple has clearly solved a problem surrounding music that many people had. The use case also transcended the geek-culture to Everyman. I wish enterprise software like Terracotta could do the same. Some day. Some day.
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