At the risk of writing a completely unoriginal blog post, I feel the need to vent about The Apple Store.
Three times, my friends, I have now gone to Polo Park to buy an Apple accessory I required, and found that they did not have it in stock. Nothing too obscure. A Camera Connection Kit (I tried twice). A VGA adapter (i.e. dongle).
In both cases I probably should have gone over to Advance to look for said item, but as a mom who trudges over to the mall with my two-year-old, once I've visited one store on a Saturday, it's lunch time, then it's nap time, then the day might as well be over. Heck, the weekend might as well be over.
The Apple Store not having Apple products is bad enough, but it takes me forever to come to the conclusion that the product is not in stock because it is so hard to get someone to help me. Sure, the place is absolutely crawling with folks in blue shirts, but they are all demonstrating how to use an iPad. Maybe I don't look like a big-ticket-item purchaser (a few years till the next one, I hope). Maybe it's the toddler. Or maybe there's something about me that says I've been an Apple user since 1983, and there is probably nothing they can do at this point to change that.
Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that The Apple Store exists primarily for branding purposes, and secondarily to sell items over $500. They make it so difficult to buy things there that I'll just keep ordering them on-line, despite the fact that I can walk to The Apple Store in under half an hour. I tried. That's the modern flippin' world we've created, folks.
Insert grumpy harrumph here.
As for the App Store, I'm slowing down, but spent far too much money there over the first few months of my iPad. This is why I both love and hate it.
Something that desperately needs to be changed in both the App Store and in the iBookstore: you need to be able to sort media for children by age group. Try to find a bookstore where everything for anyone under 18 is lumped together in one section. In the iBookstore you'll find a very unhelpful browsing category called "Children and Teens." Yikes.
End rant. Next time I'll talk about my favourite apps with a literary/publishing bent. See you!