Microsoft Stores Open

Excerpt of an article in The New York Times
Friday, February 10, 2012

Microsoft Stores Open, Often Next Door to Apple Stores 

By PETER H. LEWIS

Just down the fabled Sand Hill Road from the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, physicists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory ponder questions about energy, time, space and the possibility of alternative universes.

But back at the shopping mall, a window into an alternative universe is already taking shape, just steps from the Apple Store. Workers are constructing the latest Microsoft Store, smack in the heart of Apple territory and not far from the home of Apple’s co-founder Steven P. Jobs. It is scheduled to open on April 19.

Just as the wildly successful Apple Stores have a definite look and feel, so, too, do the dozen or so Microsoft Stores that have opened since 2009.

Glass front? Yes. Blocky wood furniture on which products are displayed almost as museum pieces? Helpful employees in T-shirts? Of course. Classes and workshops? Yes. Special area for children? Yes. Apple has a genius bar; Microsoft has an answer desk.

MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, iPods and other Apple products? Not in this universe. With the exceptions of software, the Xbox entertainment console, the Zune music player and the Kinect system that allows players to control games by physical gesture, most products in Microsoft Stores are made by other companies. Unlike Apple, Microsoft does not make computers, smartphones or tablets but provides the software that makes them run.

As in Palo Alto, almost all of the new Microsoft Stores have opened within a few feet of existing Apple Stores.