Microsoft exploring Apple-like retail shops?

You mean like that failed Microsoft Experience store in the Sony Metreon?

What's next, Gateway or Dell experience stores? Oh wait...

for crap fathers day gifts

Frustrating experience comes to mind right away. Do it the Microsoft way or forget it. Boot Windows and wait 10 minutes before you can use it experience. Maybe they could explain all the reasons Vista is so handicapped unless you get the Ultra version costing more than 3 times the price of OSX. Or why Vista basic is to basic to spend a $100.00 on. I don't see this working at all for them. They don't have a product that would be compelling enough to have anyone go in there store if they had one. But hey if they want to waste some of the Billions they have, who's to stop them. It won't last very long, that's for sure.

start your snark!

"Alleged sources near Microsoft say that the company hopes to boost its brand by launching a retail chain that presents an ideal Microsoft experience"

1) first of all let's get the grammar nazi nitpicking out of the way. "Alleged sources"??? You mean they may or may not be sources? I think you meant, "Sources allegedly near Microsoft". Can I please get a job writing for MacNN? I would improve the quality of the writing by about 1000%.

2) "An ideal Microsoft experience". That would be either an experience never seen once on this planet, or turning the customer upside-down and shaking the wallet/loose change out of their pockets then tossing them to the curb. I guess it all depends upon whose ideal experience... MS or the consumer.

Will they give you a jar of Vaseline when you walk in the door?

We all know what happens when Microsoft takes Apple's idea and improves on it, the Microsoft way:

http://www.youtube.com/v/EUXnJraKM3k&hl=en

I have no doubt that if it comes to retail, MS will do the MS thing to the experience. This ought to be fun to watch...

I can already see BSODs in the front window as you walk by.

this would probably only hasten their eventual demise

worked like Windows:

You would enter the store and within 5 minutes everything would turn blue. The store employees would ask you to leave and enter again.

After about 3 months of the store being open, everybody who entered the store would experience a time dilation effect where everything would slow down to about 1/2 of normal speed... walking, talking, etc would be affected.

A sales associate would relentlessly follow you around the store saying things like, "I see you are looking at software. How can I help you with that?" and never stops with this behavior until you punch them out because you can't take it anymore.

A 'loss-prevention specialist' will tail your every step through the store.

The product pricing will be a mind-numbing array of different prices for each product depending upon what features you want.

...everything you bought at the MS store would not work correctly until about a year later when the Service Pack came out.

The health department would shut it down because it would be so full of virii that it would be considered a public health menace.