Given that it's a university town with strong tech links, the general retail public in Cambridge is going to be quite different to the general retail public in most of the rest of the UK.
I'm not convinced the idea makes sense financially, unless they're selling all of the extras and kit parts needed to make the Pi do something useful.
If they are, then fine. If not this might look a little like a vanity move - not because it's a bad idea, but because retail in the UK can be insanely expensive to run, and it's outrageously hard to make it profitable.
In my understanding, the new reality here is that brick-and-mortar stores are increasingly becoming showrooms to support online sales, with brands closing smaller shops and focusing on big "experiential" flagship stores.
The description somebody else gave here of the Pi shop as "more of an event space than a store" would tie in well with this strategy.
Yeah that's what I've noticed, too. In Cambridge we have a Tesla store in the main shopping centre, which is just a Model S and a Model X on display in a small room with some people that talk about it. I don't think they actually make any sales there, it's just for marketing purposes.
I may be wrong, but I believe that’s how almost every Tesla showroom operates. It’s arguably one of the upsides of their direct sales model vs the traditional dealership.
They usually do make sales, or direct you to the site to complete the purchase, but the whole experience is supposed to be designed to improve on the classic horrid car dealership sales process.
> I don't think they actually make any sales there, it's just for marketing purposes.
They do. The sales process is basically the Sales Rep sitting you in front of a PC and letting you order it through the Tesla website while they sit idly by to answer any questions and guide you through the ordering process. It takes less than 15 minutes.
It's stupid simple and zero pressure compared to regular automotive sales.
For clarification, the entire process isn't done in front of a PC in the showroom and everything you do in the showroom you can also do from home.
In the showroom you customize your vehicle, place a reservation order, and pay an initial order amount (e.g. ~$3500 for the Model 3). You'll then receive two emails, the first confirms your order and the second provides you next steps you must perform.
The next steps are:
1 - Select Delivery Location
2 - Provide copies of Driver's License
3 - Provide proof of Vehicle Insurance
4 - Provide Payment Method
5 - Process Trade-In
The steps don't have to be completed in any particular order but I was instructed to wait on steps 3 and 4 until after I received a hard delivery date from Tesla.
It's all handled electronically and is relativity simple. The Payment can also be done upon delivery.
They’re already marketed as hobby kits to the general public. In fact wasn’t that the entire idea from the start? Who do you think was buying them before?
I don't get the hate this one's getting. I don't think Apple or Google are going to use a site like this for getting their logos made but there are millions of other blogs, social media handles who don't mind a decent looking logo or an idea they can customise further. I think this is an excellent effort and I can already see myself using it.
I understand the sentiment behind this, but in practice this is going to be a terrible idea, in my opinion. I can imagine the codebase littered with method1, method2 kind of edits all over quickly.
At the moment, there's not much difference other than Atomic Images / Canadian location.
As we move forward however, we'll be focusing more on containerization-oriented features such as integrated support for clustered deployments (RancherOS, Kubernetes) and the ability to deploy multiple master/minions at once with metric collection.
I know there is no end to this discussion so I'll just put in my 2cents and GTFO.
As a user of Windows systems in the 90s, the so called "openness" was precisely the reason I moved to using Linux. Most software available for Windows, in those days was crap, and I as a user needed something that worked, not mostly but, all the time. Linux gave me that. Even if there was just one office suite (star office, remember?), it worked.
After using Linux for about a decade or so, I moved to OS X, since Linux wasn't really going anywhere. The fabled desktop linux wasn't coming and everything seemed in a limbo.
OS X and Apple, for all it's faults, works, for the most part, for the user and that's why the platform is popular.
We guys here are talking and thinking with our developer hats, but users think very differently.
Is this your first time reading one of John's reviews ? The last few that I remember even had a programming section of some kind :-) And he does mention before beginning the Internals section that people can skip it and the geeks wouldn't mind.
I've observed my parents, wife and sister using OS X and they've NEVER ever quit an application "the Mac way". They just click the red cross and think that quits the application as it does on windows. The only person who gets upset about their behavior above is me and with this change, even I don't need to bother. I think it's a change for the better. The policy for automatic termination is VERY conservative so I doubt an application will be terminated when you really don't want it to.
I'm in India too and have a 1Mbps connection and downloaded Lion overnight yesterday. MTNL isn't known to be very stable but the Lion install was there in my applications folder in the morning so it does support resuming.
That said, Apple suggested they'll let users download Lion at Apple stores and since this is India we always can do some "jugaad". Why not try talking to the friendly guys at your neighborhood Apple store and they'll install Lion for you.
