Paul Thurrott offered up this gem today:

Oh good, I was just thinking that what this country needs is more Apple Stores. I have an idea: Rather than build all this crap, why doesn’t Apple just unilaterally make each of its products available for 25 percent less than the current selling price? It would save money, raise market share, and benefit the millions of people who can’t actually afford all this stuff to begin with.

I love this kind of link-bait punditry. It reads good, it’s sensationalistic and it’s batshit wrong. A massive portion of Apple’s success has been creating a retail environment completely foreign to consumers. The pre and post purchase experience of owning an Apple product is part of the product itself. A big part of Apple’s strategy is not to sell a product, it is to create a customer.

What Paul is really suggesting is going the route Dell did. Dell products suck. Dell products suck. I hated supporting them in the datacenters I worked in and on the desktops as a user. Apple has a vision that is proving to be what the public wants, and the have the management team to continue to refine and improve an already world-class ecosystem.