1104Apple is now charging to enter their stores

posted by Chris on July 23rd, 2007

You read that correctly. Apple is going to start charging $5 for every person who wants to enter their store. That $5 will get you a tracking button and you can put that $5 towards a purchase during the same visit. The button will allow store employees to locate you throughout the store, making it easier for them to throw things at you. I mean, really.

“Part of the move was to limit crowds to keep the stores safe, but also we wanted to keep the right kind of people in the stores,” said vice president of retail outlets, Vince Sciopiano. “By ‘right kind of people’ I mean true Apple customers with money, willing to pay just to look at our newest wares.”

-From BBspot

Sure, there were a huge amount of people who went to the Apple stores just to play around with the iPhone when it was released. That happens. It doesn’t make sense to start treating your store like an amusement park, though. I though you were already making bank from those fanboys who will buy anything Apple and despise anything else no matter how stupid it is or how much it costs, it is just always better, even if there are no real reasons.

Kyle Martin said, “Five dollars to just walk into the store?  It’s like they want to be elite snobs or something.”

When told of the criticism, Sciopiano said, “That’s exactly the case.”

-From BBspot

This is sad. I thought Apple was so happy that their market share in the PC market was finally increasing but now they do this and limit the amounts of new customers that they could have, simply because they want to be elitist. This is the kind of attitude that makes me not want to own an iPod.

I can get something to do the same thing for less money and it will last longer and do it better than the iPod ever could. Not only that, I can use it with universal hardware and almost any media management application.

Apple