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Quoted from the article: "It's desperation time in Cupertino, Calif., as Apple is going into the retail store business to ensure that its products receive enough attention. This move is fraught with problems, however, because the reason that Apple products are not getting the retailers' attention is because they are not selling well. If Apple machines were moving fast off the shelves, retailers would be happy to provide the shelf space.And the move into retail takes Apple into an area where it has demonstrated no competence."What a moron. Apple products sell well through Apple stores because they're presented with style by people who are not going to simply point you to the cheapest PC. Apple products don't sell well at other places because the other places don't put their weight behind selling Macs, and the poor sales lead them to invest less in promoting the mac. All else being equal, the Mac won't sell well because of face-value price issues. (Though over the years, the money I've spent on my Mac is much less than the upgrade and maintenance gravy train nightmare my PC using friends have had to put up with.) But not all else is equal. If Apple were so incompetent at retail, why is it that the Apple store is so successfull?Here's a google map of all the apple stores: (click and zoom in to see just how many there are.)<a class="user" href="http://www.freemacblog.com/applestores/&quot;&gt;http://www.freemacblog.com/applestores/&lt;/a&gt;If he concludes that Apple is incompetent at retail, I must conclude that this guy is incompetent as an analysis. Apple has proven much more competent at retail than I expected; I thought the Apple retail store was a terrible idea when I first heard about it, but I stand corrected.

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