One aspect of the experience in the Apple Store that Johnson doesn't mention is that all the gadgets there are powered up and you can play with them. I've never understood how cell phone stores and electronics retailers who almost invariably have dummy units out on display expect to sell anything to a casual buyer. This especially goes for Windows Phone 7; people who use it seem to love it, but it doesn't have much iPhone style mindshare so it seems like it NEEDS to be out there to fiddle with. But I've only seen dummy units in stores.
And an important part of this is that they pay extra care to the anti-theft systems so that they don't get in the way and stop you from using the products normally.
Many times I've seen cell phones where the anti-theft system was so bulky that you couldn't open it or close it completely, or access the keypad easily.
i went to best buy the other day and strangely, the two iphones (at their own booth in the cellphone department) were tethered but completely functional. just about every other android phone was tethered the same way but had a dummy screen.
i can't imagine that the vendors requested that the units be fake (why would you not want a working demo?) so it must be best buy that did this. yet the iphones were more expensive and possibly fragile than any of the other android phones there and they were real.
That seems like a dramatic step backwards. I remember going into a Sprint store a few years ago to test their phones. All of them could power up, all of them were active and you could test the internet, make calls, send SMS, etc. Granted this store was in a pretty posh town but I assumed all of them were like that. Now 10 years ago when they had those stupid weighted dummies, that was ridiculous.
The good shops still have at least a few demo units, and if not you can ask someone who works there to bring out a real device to try out.
I'm not saying that's a good way to do it but it is at least possible to try them out, if you're determined. For the casual buyer having to ask to try it out is a barrier, and for those just looking it's probably a deterrent.
