You know the movie where you come home from a long day’s work at the time machine/time warp research center, and you discover that instead of being married to Mena Suvari like you remembered, you’ve been married to Rosie O’Donnell all along? Cue the Munch Scream.

I brought the Mimsymobile down to Fashion Valley this morning to get an alignment done.¹ That takes about an hour. While waiting, I wandered about the mall to see what was interesting. One obvious stop: the Apple Store. So I’m walking down the center promenade, see the Apple Store, and turn into it.

Something the greeter says unnerves me. I look around as I replay what he said in my mind, and it looks like they’ve done a slight remodel again. Looks like they’ve gone back to a year or two ago. Something’s wrong with the computers, too. Very wrong.

It’s nothing to panic about, and yet, it is something to panic about. It’s unnerving; even as there’s nothing obviously wrong, my brain is telling me that something is wrong, even as it doesn’t think I’m ready for the truth yet. As I’m not panicking, this is what I re-hear the greeter saying:

“Welcome to the Microsoft Store.”

What, what?

When people said Microsoft was “copying” Apple for their boutique stores, I expected it to be more like a Sony Style copy than a near-exact duplicate. I remember John Gruber calling it “creepy” and thinking it was just, well, Gruber. I mean, yeah, they’re copying the Apple Store, but they’re not copying it. Walking into it accidentally? “Disturbing” is a better word. Yeah, they’re copying it.