I tried a little experiment over the holidays

I was in a major Canadian city just before the new year and was doing some shopping around when, for the first time, I noticed that the Future Shop was now selling Macs - I was quite surprised, honestly. For the longest time the only major retailer to do this was London Drugs and then Best Buy appeared on the scene only a couple of years ago.

Anyhow, I always noticed people bypassing those beautiful Macs in my opinion because the PC-only sales staff never knew how to set them up in a way that attracted attention. People would click on the Finder and find nothing interesting or be confused and walk away. Or Safari wouldn't be open so people wouldn't know what browser Macs used and therefore couldn't surf the web and compare experiences with their Windows browser. And so on. People just kind of walked away from them with a blank stare or a quizzical look as if to say, "I wonder what those computers are all about?"

Noticing the same thing at the Future Shop, I decided to set up one of the 24" iMacs up in a way that would hopefully attract AND keep attention.

First, I cleaned up the dozens of folders, download files, and image files that always seem to clutter Mac screens in these stores. I also created a desktop "downloads" folder and set Safari to download items into it instead of onto the desktop. Then I set the default home page in Safari to some good Apple propaganda (http://www.apple.com/ca/getamac/) and left Safari open.

Next, I changed Finder preferences so that Applications would open in icon view, hoping the icons would attract attention and also give people an idea of the many and great applications included with Macs.

Finally, I opened the Photo Booth and chose something funky to lure people from farther away. I didn't stick around too long to see the results, but I did notice that people were now clicking away and not just walking away.

I guess why I'm writing all this is because I'm a big thinker, and here's my thought: If all Macs on display in stores were set up in a similar manner, with the goals of attracting attention and making it easier for people to navigate their way around a Mac, would sales of Macs increase?

I know that ultimately most people would be talked out of a Mac due to ignorant salespeople or look elsewhere if they were of no help, but I hold out some small glimmer of hope that my efforts that day got people at least a little curious about Macs and maybe even produced a sale or two!

I sold two iMacs at a local Bestbuy and dont even work there. I simply answered other peoples questions, and showed them how the machine worked.

Both times I did this the people walked away with a machine one a 20" iMac the second time it was a black MacBook.

I've sold many people on Macs. I have a friend and I described OS X to him. He went out and bought a new PowerBook G4 17 inch. Another person I told about the beautiful design of the computers and OS X. Plus, no viruses. She got an eMac.

I think your right iwish, my local computer shop has the ipods at the front of the shop and the macs at the back. There hugh LCD screen box close by so its ugly. All alisle are about 2 metres wide, the apple is about 0.5 metres wide. Also the Mac Pro has a faulty (non apple monitor), the machines are generally incorrectly configured too.

On top of this people walk past about 50 or 60 other notebooks and PCs to see an apple section in a mess. But they do have two iMacs setup nicely one with bootcamp running XP and the other with OS 10. That does get attention. But the books don't.

I have sold 3 macs so far, two MacBooks and a kick **** MacPro.

I think it would help if Apple developed some introductory presentation program that should be run on Macs sold by non-Apple stores, the way Best Buy has their own little presentation program on all the Windows computers. It would go a long way to drawing people in by showing them how open Safari and handy MAc features Windows doesn't have. (Steve, are you paying attention?)

I was at CompUSA messing with an iMac while looking for speakers when a woman asked me to show her how to get on the web. I opened up Safari for her and it reminded me of when I was considering a MAC and couldn't figure it out myself. the word "Safari" just didn't say internet in my mind and I've always thought a better name could be chosen. Despite that, it is very intimidating for a person new to macs. Luckily that woman was humble enough to ask for help and I hope my help eventually led her to a purchase.

I did that in ToysRUs - they had a macbook with a complete bare desktop and a much reduced dock, so people who hadn't used a mac just literally walked past. I populated the dock and opened up Safari and Photo Booth and watched from the XBox display. Sure enough, the next 5 lots of people walking past saw themselves, stopped, and started clicking about. I left at that point, but it literally went from 'nobody looking' to 'everybody stopping to look'. Quite turn-around just by using Photo Booth!

Whenever I'm in CompUSA (I go to electronics stores abnormally often) I'm going to "set up" the macs for them from now on. We need recruiters!!