Is Your Local Microsoft Store Empty This Weekend?

Via my Twitter account, readers continue to send in photos from across the nation depicting absolutely mobbed Apple (AAPL) Stores. These reports jibe with my experience the weekend before this past one at Apple's Fifth Avenue/Manhattan outpost.

Interestingly, three offshoots dominate the remainder of the feedback:

1. Unsolicited reports from sad-looking Microsoft (MSFT) stores this holiday weekend;

2. Hey, this is all anecdote!; and

3. Questions about the box readers should fit me in: Journalist. Analyst. Reporter. Cheerleader. I love it.

Let's take No. 1 first, not simply because it has a "1" next to it, but because, it's the holidays -- these are light days (or at least they ought to be) -- and we could all use a laugh together.

Compare this scene from a Microsoft Store with the relative mobs you see at Apple Stores.

And then there's this shot of ... well ... a picture is worth a thousand words.

Over the last few weeks, we have discussed retail traffic quite a bit. As a former Ph.D. student (who did what any good Ph.D. student does -- I dropped out!), I'm sensitive to the notion that anecdote doesn't mean a damn thing when you're trying to determine the reality that exists in a population.