At the Palais de Pomme

I am a late convert to Mac products.  For years I eschewed the opportunity to self-brand as 'creative' because of the many, seemingly deliberate, trade-offs that Apple puts in opposition to businesslike seriousness.

About eighteen months ago I relented and bought a MacBook Pro.  I've been living with the trade-off ever since.  I use the MS Entourage suite because the Apple Mail programme won't deliver the formal style of emails that my clients expect.  Similarly, I have yet to properly resolve the conflict between the industry standard Adobe Acrobat and a continual default to Apple's Preview. Nevertheless I am happy and I admit that my heart does lift a little every time I use something like the Dashboard function.  Like I said, I'm a convert.

On Friday I went into Apple's flagship store on Regent Street and bought Time Capsule.  I haven't been 100% comfortable with my backing up and it simply isn't professional for me to have any doubt in my mind about data retrieval and the product came highly recommended.  Back at home I realised that I needed to upgrade my Operating System from 'Tiger' to 'Leopard' so I went back into town this morning and bought the upgrade.

Over two visits to the store I spoke to five different staff members.  All were young, polite and extremely enthusiastic about Apple products.  They each took the opportunity to tell me how cool the product was that I was buying.  But not one of them asked me what I used my computer for.

The store represents a genuine triumph of branding over salesmanship and I feel that my business is a little more exposed each time I shop there.