[jasonsRX7]

I was in the Apple store today, and ask I was messing around on the Powermacs, I overheard a conversation behind me between a girl, her father, and an Apple Store employee. Basically, the girl was a student who used a desktop PC, and had been thinking about trying out a Powerbook, since she had heard good things about them. Her father was asking questions about software compatibility, which the employeed answered. However, the daughter asked if she would be able to connect to her Windows desktop computer and control it remotely. At this point the employee totally started BSing them. He said that the only way it would work is if the Windows computer was logged into an Active Directory, and that it would be incredibly hard to set up at their house. He started spouting off then about how OS X is based on BSD, and that Apple used BSD as the basis for Darwin, and just really telling them a bunch of irrelevant information to the question she asked.

As I was listening, I really wanted to politely interrupt and say, "sorry, but I overheard, and if your desktop is running Windows XP, you can enable remote desktop and then get a free program from Microsoft on your Mac that'll let you remote control the PC. And if you're not running XP, you can get another free program on the PC called VNC that'll let you do something similar. It won't cost you a dime if you already have a home network setup."

But I didn't want to put the employee in a bad spot, and didn't want to be some jerk customer trying to be a know it all (even though I do administer a Windows network for a living). So I let him continue to spout off, and figured if she really wanted a Mac, this wouldn't stop her.

So.... should I have said something, and tried to make her realize that the Mac would have had no problem doing what she wanted to do, or did I do the right thing by letting the employee (attempt to) do his job?

[starman]

I would have.

Mike

[historylme]

I'm with you on that. I would have let the guy do his job. Although, afterward I might have let him know about the software to remote control the PC.

Good call, I think you did the right thing.

[TubaMuffins]

you could've waited until the employee left. when i was shopping for a digital camera, there was a mom and her son shopping too. I was listening to the employee telling them about the different cameras and he was also trying to tell them to buy an adapter thingy to stick the memory card into instead of hooking up the camera to download the pictures onto the computer. his reasoning was that it would save battery power, although the adapter was $50 or something, i just looked at the mom and shook my head no. If the employee is working for comission then they are going to upsell every chance they get so i think its in the right of the customer to know all their options, in my opinion you should have said something.

[starman]

The guy "doing his job" basically screwed the store out of a sale.

If you wanted to help Apple, you would have said something...politely.

Mike

[iMOTOR]

Good question. That has happened to me at best buy many times ( Apple Store people usually will be honest if they can't answer a question). I was at BB once when I overheard someone ask the BB kid about a digital camera. The BB kid said "yeah, that camera is ok, but if you really want good pics you should buy this [$900] Sony because it has a lens". I didn't chime in because there is no polite way of explaining "hey dumb*ss, all cameras have lenses".

[jasonsRX7]

Haha if you just stand still in Best Buy for 5 minutes, you'll overhear a lot of conversations like that. It's impossible to save every misled customer at that store. I was really surprised to hear that inaccurate response from the Apple employee, though. I know people don't know everything, but that was pretty far off, and he should have just said he didn't know and asked someone else.

I think the main reason I held off saying anything is because the other day I was in Target standing in line to buy GT4, and there was a customer ahead of me wanting to buy a new iPod mini (6gb). The salesman said that iPod mini's only held 4gb, and cost $250. He just didn't know about the new ones, but when she insisted that there were new iPods out and was wondering if they'd match the price, he told her there were no such iPods. He was getting a little rude, so I butted in and confirmed what the customer said. He got pretty pissed at that point, and said "well fine, but we don't have them and who knows if we will have them in the future." To my surprise, the woman gave me an evil look, like "get out of my business!" Half of me was genuinely trying to help, but the other half just wanted them to hurry the hell up.

[historylme]

Originally posted by iMOTOR:
Good question. That has happened to me at best buy many times ( Apple Store people usually will be honest if they can't answer a question). I was at BB once when I overheard someone ask the BB kid about a digital camera. The BB kid said "yeah, that camera is ok, but if you really want good pics you should buy this [$900] Sony because it has a lens". I didn't chime in because there is no polite way of explaining "hey dumb*ss, all cameras have lenses".

[malvolio]

Originally posted by iMOTOR:
I didn't chime in because there is no polite way of explaining "hey dumb*ss, all cameras have lenses".

Actually, pinhole cameras don't.



But I don't think Best Buy carries them.

[iMOTOR]

Originally posted by malvolio:
Actually, pinhole cameras don't.

A pinhole is essentially a type of lens. The function of a lens is to focus stray particles of light (or photons) onto a two dimensional surface. A pinhole does this just as a glass element lens would, albeit less reliably and effectively. You have to have perfect lighting and distance to get good results with a pinhole.

Take a ground glass and hold it up to a scene, without some sort of lens in front of it all you will see are scattered particles of light = no image. The reason the human eye needs no external lens is because it has one built in.

Sorry for derailing the post.

[malvolio]

I bow to your superior knowledge, Mr. Science.

[mitchell_pgh]

I would have waited until the sales person walked away and simply said "hey, I have a similar situation and you can do it using free software from Microsoft. It controls a PC perfectly.

I wouldn't have corrected the sales person... as you were walking in to the conversation 1/2 way through. Having worked at Best Buy selling cameras a few years back, I would have "camera pros" trying to act like they were know it all's when they didn't hear the whole conversation.

There was nothing more annoying then when someone said "I will only buy Cameras from Japan" and then someone says "Well XYZ camera will do that (from China)"

[f1000]

Originally posted by iMOTOR:
A pinhole is essentially a type of lens. The function of a lens is to focus stray particles of light (or photons) onto a two dimensional surface. A pinhole does this just as a glass element lens would, albeit less reliably and effectively.

A pinhole is NOT a lens, since a pinhole doesn't "focus" light.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.

[wdlove]

I also think that you did the right thing. Can empathize how you felt though. Not easy to keep quiet.

[budster101]

I've interupted a sales-idiot before, and this is what I did.

Excuse me, I have had a similar experience and would like to offer it if you would like.
The employee was gracious and allowed me to speak. I informed them of the cituation and the solution that worked for me, then I politely excused myself while the employee made the sale.

He then later came up to me and thanked me for informing him of something he had been unaware and would pass this bit of knowledge on to the other people.

I am a welcome and frequent customer at that store though, so maybe I did hold a bit more clout than you may in this regard. I feel comfortable with the sales people and the management,and they show their appreciation for my patronage kindly.

What am I saying here?

You screwed the pooch mate. Should hap spouted off, and to heck with the sales person's ego...

PS: Edit/

To put a finer point on the "Pinhole camera debate":

Some pinhole cameras have lenses. They are the kind used for security, not the boxy homeade cameras.

[f1000]

Originally posted by budster101:
Some pinhole cameras have lenses. They are the kind used for security, not the boxy homeade cameras.

A true pinhole camera is usually diffraction limited, so it's pointless to add lenses to such a system. It's been many years since I've taken a classical optics course, though, so perhaps the laws of physics have changed on me.

EDIT: After giving this some thought, I realized that lenses could be used to more quickly expand a pinhole image to the boundaries of a CCD (i.e., "zoom") and thus create a more compact camera. The quality of the image, though, would remain the same or even diminish.

[OldManMac]

I would have waited until the "salesperson" was done, and then offered the correct advice, politely, to the customer, and sent them to a real Apple employee; the Apple Solutions Consultant in CompUSA. That salesperson probably did blow a sale. Unfortunately, the people in the Apple Stores are mostly typical retail folks, and are not paid commission. I've gotten more than one sale, thanks to the ineptitude of Apple retail people.

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by KarlG:
I would have waited until the "salesperson" was done, and then offered the correct advice, politely, to the customer, and sent them to a real Apple employee; the Apple Solutions Consultant in CompUSA. That salesperson probably did blow a sale. Unfortunately, the people in the Apple Stores are mostly typical retail folks, and are not paid commission. I've gotten more than one sale, thanks to the ineptitude of Apple retail people.

You would have sent the person to a CompUSA from an Apple Store? LOL. I hope that was a sarcastic remark. . . It really depends on the situation, but leaving the sales rep to do his ignorant thing is certainly not the wrong thing to do. It's not your place to facilitate a sale; if an employee screws it up, it's that employee's fault. Sales reps sometimes get really territorial and pissy if they believe someone is trying to upstage them and "steal" a sale. You probably did exactly the right thing by not intervening.

[OldManMac]

No, that was not a sarcastic remark. About 2/3 of the CompUSA stores have full-time Apple employees, known as Apple Solutions Consultants (ASC), in them, and a few more have part-time ASCs in them. They are Apple employees, not CompUSA, and Apple Store retail employees can't hold a candle to them. This program has been in existance for almost three years, and many of them have been in the program that long. They are vastly better trained, and much more knowledgeable than a $10/hour retail employee. They are considered the Gold Standard within Apple, as far as sales experience and ability, and knowledge of the Apple line and related products.

[Big Mac]

Nonetheless, CompUSA is a hole, and I think you're selling short the average Apple Store employee. Simply because they're not at the high end of the pay scale does not mean that they are incompetent or do not take their jobs seriously. The reps at the Apple Stores around my area seem to be on the ball, at least.

[sugar_coated]

You did what you thought was the best thing to do at the point in time. At any other point in time if you had done something differently then that would be just as appropriate as what you actually did, it really doesnt matter if you ask me, what matters is how you feel later, if you do you feel as though you could have done better than stand by and just watch, then you should remember that it really doesnt matter anyway you look at it what matters is that you should know that nothing really matters at the end of the day and you are really hungry and have to get some lunch.

[analogika]

I actually work for an Apple reseller, and I must say that if I give incorrect advice, I am happy to be corrected. It helps me do a better job on the next customer.

What I do *not* appreciate is know-it-all customers who barge in with "helpful" evangelism when a current Windows-user is making his first tentative contact with Macintosh.

I may not always be right, but I *do* know what I'm doing.

-s*

[Drakino]

On a similar note, I never suggest someone goes to an Apple store over a local reseller. One part is that the closest apple store is 50 miles away, but the main reason is that the Apple Store people have very little experience. I'd rather the local reseller with 20 years of experience assist them.

But don't worry, soon Apple will crush all the resellers and ensure we can only go to their poorly trained $10/hour people and get incorrect answers like this.

If it wasn't for my local reseller on March 24th, 2001, I would have never looked at a Mac. I am very confortable saying such especially after the near snobby, or no assistance offered to me at multiple Apple stores. (two in Denver, one in LA, one in San Fran, one in New York).

[AppleOptionFour]

I've sold AppleCare to at least 5 people while in the store.

I think they like to hear a users experience and trust that over the staff.

[iMOTOR]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Having worked at Best Buy selling cameras a few years back, I would have "camera pros" trying to act like they were know it all's when they didn't hear the whole conversation.

I heard the kid at best buy tell the customer that the "cheap cameras don't have lenses".
I didn't need to hear the whole story to know this was incorrect.

Originally posted by f1000:
A pinhole is NOT a lens, since a pinhole doesn't "focus" light.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.

A lens is generally known as a group of refractive glass elements that form an image by modifying or placing particles of light from an object point to meet with the circle of confusion (or film plane) essentially focusing the light onto the film plane. In order to form an image on a two dimensional recording device (in this case a ccd) there must be some sort of light modifier, pinhole or otherwise. If no light modifying device was necessary, than you could simply open and close the dark slide in a film holder and you'd have a picture.

Except for experimentalists, the pinhole aperture has been mostly irrelevant in photography for the last hundred years, so lens normally means a glass optic light modifier, and a pinhole aperture does the same using different technology. No light modifying device = no focused image projected onto film plane, period.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally posted by sugar_coated:
You did what you thought was the best thing to do at the point in time. At any other point in time if you had done something differently then that would be just as appropriate as what you actually did....

Thank you, Morpheus
"What happened happened, and couln't have happened any other way"

[ManOfSteal]

Originally posted by jasonsRX7:
Thank you, Morpheus
"What happened happened, and couln't have happened any other way"

[f1000]

Originally posted by iMOTOR:
A lens is generally known as a group of refractive glass elements that form an image by modifying or placing particles of light from an object point to meet with the circle of confusion (or film plane) essentially focusing the light onto the film plane. In order to form an image on a two dimensional recording device (in this case a ccd) there must be some sort of light modifier, pinhole or otherwise. If no light modifying device was necessary, than you could simply open and close the dark slide in a film holder and you'd have a picture.

A pinhole does not refract light at all; hence, it does not focus! It certainly acts to limit the circle of confusion at the image plane, but to call it a lens is still incorrect. This is not simply a matter of semantics. Besides the fact that it bends light, a lens usually has a much larger aperture (often its diameter) than a pinhole. The larger the aperture, the less diffraction-related blurring there is in the final image. A lens' larger aperture also permits it to have more light gathering power than a pinhole. When the store clerk said, "it has a lens," what he�s implying is that such a camera has more light gathering power AND a higher potential resolution (as in sharpness) than one with simply a pinhole. Of course, there are other factors involved in final image quality, such as the quality of the lenses or the resolution of the film/CCD, but the point is a pinhole is not just a type of lens. Nobody in optics calls a pinhole a lens. In fact, ALL of my texts explicitly describe pinhole cameras as being cameras without lenses.

References:
1. Hecht, Eugene. Optics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987. 199.
2. Herzberger, Max. "Lens". McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Physics. Ed. Sybil P. Parker. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991. 674.

[typoon]

Originally posted by AppleOptionFour:
I've sold AppleCare to at least 5 people while in the store.

I think they like to hear a users experience and trust that over the staff.

I agree with that. I've sold a couple of machines and other software that way while standing in a store either BB, compUSA or an AppleStore.

What I would have done was what others have said. Wait til the sales person leaves or just interrupt politely. I do that sometimes. Especially if they are Wrong. I don't hesitate to tell them and maybe let them know there is an alternative. I've actually met several nice people that way.

[storer]

I would have just politely interrupted and corrected the salesperson, I mean, it's not like you'll ever see the customer again if the get knarky about it.

Probably not good to take my advice though. I can be pretty rude to staff members, but only if its warranted. Yesterday, I took my little sister shopping for an Mp3 player (yes I know, not an iPod, but hey, i tried to convince her) and I was ignored by every single place we went to for the first 15 minutes. FYI I am only 15 years old, but I was a 15 year old who was ready to spend $150^ with them. After a while i was really angry when we were at harvey norman, and I said to the bloke at the music section who had just begun serving another customer who had just turned up after having nothing to do and ignoring me "'Scuse me mate, do you ignore all of your customers‽" "I''ll be with you in a minute, iI only just saw you." And that pissed me off, i had made eye contact with him like 5 times during the 15 minutes in which he ignored us. Grrrr... rant...

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by ManOfSteal:

Boy, I didn't understand a single word you just said.

[The Godfather]

Are Apple Store salespeople unionized?

[OldManMac]

Originally posted by The Godfather:
Are Apple Store salespeople unionized?

No.

[Cipher13]

I'd have interrupted and corrected them. But then, I'm a prick.

[AppleOptionFour]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
I'd have interrupted and corrected them. But then, I'm a prick.

A prick or someone who pays attention to detail? Or both?

I can't stand when someone spreads wrong information; esp in the Apple Store.

Its all in the details.