On Wednesday, I ended up going to Sherway Gardens for the afternoon, where the main attraction is an actual Apple Store. Said store is also known as the Fruit Stand or Fruit Stall, similar to how the “Apple/Command” key on Mac keyboards is commonly called “Fruit.” A few points of interest:
- When you get in, you’re accosted by no less than five people. The initial object of my first trick was to look at iPod accessories, which are located about 2/3 of the way back in the store. Five salespeople asked if we required any assistance on the way there.
- All iPod accessories in the Fruit Stand are overpriced, and anyone buying a case for their freaking Shuffle needs to seriously reconsider what they’re doing with their disposable income.
- Those MacBook Pro systems are incredibly nice looking. Maybe next time a laptop purchase is needed…
- That Mac Pro system is also incredibly nice looking, especially paired with the 30″ Apple Cinema Display.
- You know, my 4th gen iPod/20GB is getting kind of scratched, not to mention it’s having syncing issues and freezes sometimes.
- Why yes, sir, I *would* like to purchase a new 80GB black iPod video right this minute!
So, after damning myself repeatedly because of my incredible consumer-whoreism tendencies, I walked out of there with a new device that will help kill time on the bus. I’m so conflicted, because on one hand the 20GB black and white unit still technically works for what I need it to… but on the other hand, it’s so shiny and will play videos of Jack Bauer gettin’ some terrorists and it’ll hold all my music and… stop it.
I’m going to have to put in some extra hours for work for this one, at least.
The other interesting expedition today was to the Sony Store. I am of the opinion that Sony makes a certain number of things with really decent quality:
- Televisions
- Camcorders
- Headphones (as long as they’re more than $20)
- Decent-looking PC displays (well, at least the Trinitrons)
Unfortunately, the company is currently on this huge “Full HD” or “True HD 1080” kick, which basically means that their really expensive TV’s will support a native resolution of 1980×1020 running progressively (60fps.) This is due to their launch of the PS3, which doesn’t have an internal scaler, so your games run at either standard-def or 1080p; if your TV doesn’t support 1080p, guess what mode you’re running in?
What was mildly amusing that the TV shown in the front of their store had an infomercial going on about Full HD 1080p, blah blah blah… until I realized it was a 42″ Grand Wega LCD projection model, which has a native resolution of 720p and doesn’t support the Full HD variety.
I also took a look at the PS3 on display in the store, which failed to impress. (Hint: show the XMB interface and perhaps flOw; both of those things look pretty. I don’t want to see NBA ’07.)