Not too long ago I thought very seriously about posting a rant on the downside of having knowledgeable staff at retail electronics stores. My specific case-in-point was my 30 min wait in line at an Apple store while watching a short line of people have 5 – 10 min tech support conversations with the cashiers instead of just handing over their credit card and getting the heck out of my way.

I got over it.

Today I ventured out to my favorite Apple Store with the goal of acquiring a gift for a family member. I was pleasantly shocked to find an army of Apple Store employees walking around with wireless PDAs from Symbol complete with credit card readers. As I dodged through crowds of wandering people I was stopped by an employee in a red Apple shirt who asked if I were looking to purchase anything with a credit card and, if so, whether I would be willing to receive my receipt via email.

That sounded pretty good to me, considering the line for the cashiers wrapped around the store. I told her exactly what I wanted, she went and grabbed it, swiped my credit card, and 5 mins later I received my receipt via email on my Treo.

Now that’s digital progress!

I was so happy with my retail shopping experience at the Apple Store that I’ll resist ranting on the fact that I really wanted to try out Aperture running on a Dual Dual-core G5 but couldn’t because every damn demo machine in the store was occupied by an 18-year-old kid checking his/her personal webmail. So much for the “come in and experience a Mac for yourself” theory. It’s more of a “come in and mooch off of our free internet access while pissing off the people who came in wanting to try out the products before buying them.”

I’ll also resist a rant that came to mind after a recent trip to the Apple London retail store where I tried to find a seat in the audience of the Apple demo theater but couldn’t because every seat was filled with a wireless moocher checking their webmail and surfing on their own personal PC laptops!!! That’s right, PC users walked right into the store, went up the pretty glass stairway, grabbed a comfortable seat in the Theater while some poor shmo tried to give a demo of Final Cut Pro to 50 people who weren’t paying a single moment of attention to him.

Yeah, I’ll avoid those rants… for now… ;-)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

It started as a, “I think I’ll change the background color of my blog while I’m in here posting something…” and ended up filling up a good portion of my Sunday afternoon.

Using Dreamweaver 8 I clumsily figured out these whacky CSS rules and made my site look more “Flash-like”. Fireworks also came in handy as I tried to tie in the sexy new red box design that you see in the banner.

I also revived the cool Flash cartoon that the guys and gals at Nectarine made for all of us who spoke at MXDU 2004.

I’m sure it could use some more tweaking but I have spent enough time on this for one day.

From the Studio team:

For those who may have missed this information due to the acquisition completion, we wanted to make sure our customers know about some changes in the upgrade pricing and policies for Studio 8.

Effective December 31, 2005, there will be pricing increases and policy changes for certain customers regarding Studio 8 upgrades. We encourage anyone thinking of purchasing Studio 8 upgrade to review the information below and take advantage of the existing pricing before December 31, 2005. After this date, adjusted pricing for upgrading to Studio 8 will be as follows:

- Any past commercial Studio customer can upgrade to Studio 8 for $399.

- Any past commercial customer who own both Dreamweaver (any version) and Flash (any version excluding Flash Basic) can upgrade to Studio 8 for $399.

- Any past commercial Dreamweaver customer can purchase the Studio 8 upgrade for $799.

- Any past commercial Flash customer (excluding Flash Basic) can purchase the Studio 8 upgrade for $599.

- Any past commercial Fireworks or FreeHand customer wishing purchase Studio 8 upgrade cannot do so, and must purchase a full new Studio 8 license at $999.

Pricing for brand new product licenses or point product upgrades will not be changing. Full details can be found at http://www.macromedia.com/software/studio/special/intropricing/policy.html.

If you haven’t upgraded to Studio 8 yet, now is a great time to take advantage of the current pricing before it ends December 31, 2005. Buy the upgrade at www.macromedia.com/go/upgradetostudio) or at your preferred reseller (http://www.macromedia.com/buy/).