What's old is new
So, my unhappiness regarding the death of the Foleo has been offset by the fact that there clearly is some interest in this sort of device. The eee PC from Asus and the formerly-nanobook now Cloudbook from everex both fall into this niche, an ultralight, ultraportable, linux based machine designed primarily for working online. Especially now that Openoffice can sync with google docs, this is pretty tempting, and it's a fascinating return of the thin client.
Now, here's the thing. I have only seen pictures of both of these, but I'm already biased against the eee and in favor of the cloudbook. None of this thinking is technical. Some of it is because eee's web presence hurts me, while cloudbook is from a smart little company who has already been selling $200 Linux PCs through Walmart and because they took the name from the discussion that surrounds these devices. But at heart, I look at the pictures, and the eee looks chintzy and the cloudbook looks pretty darn cool.
All of this is a strange illustration of why the apple store is such a fantastically good idea. I look at these (and other high end gadgets, like the Nokia 810 or the Kindle) and I and willing to shell out somewhat silly amounts of money to buy them, but I don't want to be stuck with something that I'm going to hate. I want to pick it up, play with it a bit, and get a sense of whether this is something I would enjoy using.
Apple gets this. Sure, their design is excellent, making their products things that it's easy to imagine yourself using, but that's only part of the equation. The Apple Store is laid out to encourage picking these things up and playing with them. The front half of the store has products spaced out so there is room for one shopper in front of each item, and there are lots of the same device, so there's no sense of waiting. The overall selection is small, and made smaller by the fact that any of the choices are internal - when you pick up an Ipod to play with, it doesn't matter how much memory it has, it only matters that you're getting a sense for how it feels.
The Apple store doesn't have the kind of sales or markdowns that a box store does, but that's a tradeoff I'm kind of happy making, especially considering the alternative. With the death of CompUSA, the only real options left to me are Walmart/Target, Best Buy or Radio Shack. In each of those cases, I expect staff that are indifferent at best, hostile at worst, and little to no opportunity to play with the merchandise provided they even have what I want in the first place. That drives me to the Internet, where I must face highly suspect reviews and a complete lack of any tactile sense of the product.
Is there a solution? Could some third party create an Apple store? Companies like Sony and Nokia have created their own, and that's nice, but it doesn't really fill my need - a place where I can peruse various widgets and see what works. I suppose it would be problematic - folks like me would come in, try out the products, then go find the lowest price for the one they like somewhere else. For a company like Apple or Sony that's not so bad - they're still getting my money - but for a third party retailer, that would probably mean death very fast unless there was some reason (like excellent support and service) why you would want to buy there. That is one of those things that seems like a good plan on paper, but very few companies manage to actually follow through on it.
All of which really boils down to the fact that the risk in adoption of these things is still going to be pretty high. And that's probably fair, no matter how much I dislike it. But, still, I can hope.
Originally published at Bibliomancer.Com. You can comment here or there.