Some things never change-- or, at least, they change too slowly to notice. Take Apple's presence in the retail market, for example. Just over a year ago, conditions were atrocious: show-floor Macs were off, crashed, crowded by Wintels, and actively ignored by salespeople. Customers interested in buying a Mac were promptly steered towards a Wintel instead. Apple took a long, hard look at the carnage and decided it was time for a change. So they cut a deal with CompUSA to build Apple stores-within-stores, and all other retailers were dropped. It was a bold move, but drastic situations require drastic measures. Unfortunately, if you think back, the initial reaction to those Apple sections was less than glowing; it was a classic example of "right idea, wrong execution." A year later, most feedback we get about those Apple ghettoes in CompUSA stores is still pretty solidly negative. (There's also the issue of CompUSA's less-than-compelling Mac advertising, and we don't even want to get into the whole stocking ladder thing...)

So is it any surprise that Best Buy's re-entry into the Mac world is being reported as a disaster somewhere on the scale between "Three Mile Island" and "Microsoft Word 6 for the Macintosh"? Sordid details abound; for examples, take a look at MacCentral's coverage of the nightmare, including Don Crabb's commentary. In essence, on the day of the big rollout, it appears that most Best Buy employees were oblivious to the fact that their store now sold iMacs. Worse yet, the employees that did know seemed completely hostile to the idea of actually selling anything with an Apple on it. And as for display models, well, the end is the beginning is the end; reports of crashed and nonfunctional demo units are all over the place.

Now, we ask this in all sincerity: is anyone actually surprised? Best Buy is widely regarded as an even less friendly place to buy a computer than CompUSA is, so all of these reports, while at least vaguely troubling, strike us as par for the course. We have high hopes that Apple can make Best Buy a more iMac-friendly environment, but we're not holding our breath. The one saving grace may be that, despite being such an evidently horrible place to buy a computer, Best Buy still claims to sell one out of every three consumer computers sold in cities where the Big Yellow Tag is open for business. With numbers like that, it's possible that the Best Buy deal may still boost iMac sales. We wonder, though, if people who are discriminating enough to buy an elegant and friendly computer are really likely to buy one from such an inelegant and unfriendly store.