It all depends on the quality of the people ( and their training, of course ). Some are simply there to earn a paycheck, others may not have ever seen a Mac before being hired! Some are people persons. Some are experts.
I don't care much for 'shopping' either. I usually know what I want, the price and where I can get it before I leave the house. That's probably never going to be defined as 'shopping'!
But I think Apple has a certain advantage when a person walks into their stores. That person already knows that Macs are different but somehow that seems not to scare them enough to stay away, they actually want to know or at least see what they can do. They don't seem to be as interested in technical aspects of cpu and bus speed. They actually use a computer to do something and would like to enjoy that activity more than they do on a Windows machine.
With this kind of customer walking in and virtually asking to be sold something, I'm surprised Apple is not doing better! Probably goes back to the type of people working there...
I admit I was not expecting much from their stores when I first heard about them, but, once again, someone at Apple made some decisions without contacting me. Fortunately, they have done quite well despite of my lack of input!
