Lee Scoggins

As Mac fans here know, today was the launch of Tiger's operating system. Well I thought it would be cool to line up early and see what these Apple releases were all about. I wwnt to one of the two Atlanta retail stores and about 40-50 people showed up around 5:00 for a 6:00PM opening of the store.

I figured if you stood in line you would at least get a crack at the better promo items-they were giving away an iPod, PowerBook, iPod mini, iSight so the hardware was pretty decent and the odds were good being a smaller store. We probably has 60 people around the time the opened the store. I bet that at least we could buy Tiger for below retail given that Amazon is offering $30 off rebates.

Well they let us in and the sales staff was really friendly and clapped for everyone standing in line and they started passing out the cards which you scratched off to see what you won...and they passed out Tiger. Well bummer #1 was Tiger was given out at FULL MSRP. Then the 60 or so who had waited in line for an hour started scratching off the cards and no one won anything but a $0.99 iTunes song. Bummer #2. This is a way to reward customer loyalty. They give away MULTIPLE iTunes songs in soda promos now????

Not a great showing of loyalty by Apple. No T-shirts, nothing...

The Tiger demos were fairly impressive but I decided to order mine from Amazon and save some money. I guess I order my free $0.99 song now. Big Whoop.

I would have least stacked some of the "prize" cards in the first 50 or so cards so the most loyal users would have a chance. And I would have created a big discount on Tiger to help build word of mouth loyalty from the Mac faithful. It really seems like we should have just waited until later in the evening when the crowds had died down. Likely the PowerBook winner will walk into the store at 11PM when all excitement and crowds are no more...

Any other Mac fans go to the launch tonight?

Did you win anything big?

What did you think?

no fears alone at night she's sailing through the crowd
in her ears the phones are tight and the music's playing loud
~skateaway

Pamela

Lee, I was at the Tiger launch tonight at the Glendale Galleria and I was also bummed. Stood in a long line for an hour. Got my scratch off card. Yeah, one measly iTunes song. I have been to other launches and scored some cool swag. Not tonight. No shirts. No posters. Nada.

I did pick up Tiger, knowing full well it would be full retail. Fry's was selling it tonight for $109. I also got a new case for my Shuffle. Very disappointed in the whole thing. Oh well. As I was standing in line I thought, you don't see people standing in lines like this for the latest Windows OS!

I haven't installed it yet. Trying to figure out if I want to go clean install or archive and install. My PowerMac G5 is only 2 months old and I just did a clean install of 10.3 on my TiBook. The only thing holding me back from a clean install is that Quark limits the number of times you can install your software on a computer. After the limit you need to call Quark for permission to install it again. Don't want to go through that.

Kyle McKnight

The two things I envy about this thread...it mentions the apple stores that I'd really like to check out, and the fact that the full OS can be had for about $100. I wish WinXP was that price.

Is there an Apple store in Dallas? If so I may have to go check it out!

Kyle McKnight

Patrick_S

Of course the store employees don’t know which cards are the big winners and if they were told to distribute the cards in a certain order and it became apparent big winners were always on the top of that order do you really think you would ever have a chance at winning a big prize? If so I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would like to sell you.

SteveLa

http://www.apple.com/retail

I don't know anyone that walks into an Apple Store and expects to get hardware or software on sale, especially something on day of launch with lots of media coverage and great word-of-mouth. I've never seen anything on sale at an Apple Store except discontinued items or floor items. I can almost always buy things cheaper online (software, DVD's, computers, televisions, etc) but there are times I want the instant gratification that walking into a store on launch date provides. Today was one of those days.

Pamela

Yes, it was! So what do y'all think? I have it installed in my G5 and it's currently installing on the TiBook. It seems pretty zippy on the G5. Right now I'm playing with the widgets. Some bugs, but having fun! I think the Automator will come in handy for me, especially when I have batches of photos that have to be converted from jpeg to tiff and from color to black and white.

SteveLa

I've only installed it on my desktop machine for now. Can't install it on my laptop until Cisco releases an update to their VPN client. First impressions are positive. The release is faster than the beta versions that I had tested. The Spotlight indexing in particular was significantly faster than in my previous testing. Automator is going to be a huge help. I've already set up a few smart folders in Mail. Being able to search those folders that are updated dynamically is going to be a big time saver for me. Mail.app did crash the first time I launched it after the mail conversion, but it was fine after I re-launched. Don't really like the new mail action buttons, though. One very sweet piece of eye candy is the RSS screen saver. It's pretty damned cool the way the RSS feeds scale to size as they rotate from front to back (this is a visualization best seen in person) but the best part is that as a headline pops onto the screen, you can press a number on the keyboard and Safari will take you right to the full story. Fantastic!

Pamela

I just installed it on my laptop and now, no wireless connection. I did a search and it is apparently a problem with others as well.

Too tired to deal with it tonight. I guess that's what I get for being an early adopter!

Joseph S

This is the first OS I don't have by launch since OS 7. The good news is I have a new BTO Dual 2.3 GHz on the way soon and a new 20" display. The bad news is they didn't come for free.

Thomas Newton

At the Apple Store I went to, they added insult to injury by having mall guards check the contents of every Apple bag as the buyer left the store. Even if it must have been plain as day to them that the buyer had no possible chance to shoplift merchandise in the area between the cash register and the door.