It's now officially official-- you can buy an iMac for $29.99 a month. (Before it was only just "official," since while it had been confirmed by a representative of the Apple Consumer Loan program, it hadn't yet been announced in a press release.) More details on the program are now available, and there are some really neat things about this loan program. For instance, you can walk into CompUSA, apply for the loan via the web, become approved while you wait, and waltz out of the store with your brand-spanking-new iMac having not paid a dime. If you prefer never leaving your house, you can also apply and buy via the Apple Store site. With no money down and no payments due for 120 days, it really is a pretty easy way to grab an iMac for the holidays without having to make any kind of financial outlay until, say, March-- at which point you would hopefully be over the pinch of paying for all the other holiday gifts you went out and bought. That's the good news.

There is, as always, some complementary bad news, just to keep things karmically balanced. That Gateway/Your:)Ware-style 14.89% interest rate is still in effect, despite rumors that the rate would drop to about 8% when the program was officially announced. Yes, you pay only $29.99 a month, but because of the interest accrued, you pay that $29.99 a month for over five and a half years. In essence, you'd be paying $2000 for your $1299 iMac. Whoa! So much for the concept of a low-cost consumer machine. Sure, this program may make the iMac "the most affordable"-- $29.99 a month is pretty darn easy to afford, by most standards-- but it sure doesn't make it the least expensive.

But then again, the other other side of the coin is that you can pay off the loan early with no penalty. And lots of people are willing to pay interest for the privilege of getting a great computer with no money down and easy-to-meet payments over time. And maybe lots more don't even think about things like interest and just live in the now-- the statistics on credit card debt in the U.S. would certainly imply that. The bottom line is, while the whole "pay lots more money over a longer period of time" gives us the heebie-jeebies, we're very likely in the minority on that issue, and we're all just going to have to wait and see whether this program catches on with the public. Heck, Your:)Ware sure seems to be doing alright. (If you're interested in learning more, Apple's pushing the program on its web site.)

Meanwhile, Apple's plan to make the iMac more easily available to the average consumer continues to move forward. The Consumer Loan is a big part of that plan, but so is the renewed reseller relationship with Best Buy. Best Buy sells a pretty significant chunk of computers into the home market, if their numbers can be believed, so signing them on to sell iMacs is a crucial move. Apple's history with Best Buy was shaky, to say the least-- after all, they were the first national Apple reseller to start pulling Macs from the shelves, in the Great Retailer Purge that left CompUSA as the only national retail chain still allowed to sell Macs. But apparently things have been patched up, and Best Buy will start selling iMacs in its three hundred stores in thirty-five states beginning this Sunday. A MacWEEK article discusses the rollout.

To help promote the introduction, Apple is using their tried-and-true method of recruiting Mac-savvy volunteers to staff Demo Days events at Best Buy stores, just as they've very successfully done at CompUSA stores for the rollout of new products. We're very interested to hear if the same arrangement proves successful in Best Buy's environment, which is pretty different from CompUSA's. (One anachronism we've noticed is that while it's easy to think of Best Buy as a warehouse full of consumer electronic equipment, it's CompUSA that usually looks like a warehouse. The only Best Buy we've been in was at least clean and well-lit.)

Interestingly, Best Buy-- whose clientele is typically much more geared to the average electronics-buying consumer than CompUSA's-- isn't participating in Apple's new "iMac for $29.99 a month" consumer loan program. Apparently the reason is that Best Buy already has their own consumer loan program, though we weren't able to find hide nor hair of it on their web site. When the new Best Buy store near us opens in a few weeks, maybe we'll pop on down to see if the terms are any better than Apple's.

And in "Redmond Justice" news, apparently we aren't the only viewers who think Microsoft's new mouthpiece Ted Edelman is as, er, uncompelling as Scott Hope on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Based on several reports, Edelman (who entered the ring to relieve heavy-hitter John Warden once Apple golden boy Avie Tevanian took the stand for cross-examination) seemed to us to be whiny, sarcastic, and about as sharp as a bag of wet hair. True, we weren't there for the shooting, but the judge was-- and he evidently agrees with us. A Bloomberg News article details how, on the second day of Avie's cross-examination, an impatient Judge Jackson yelled at Ted for deliberately "mischaracterizing" Avie's statements.

Reportedly, the judge's sour looks had revealed his distaste for Ted's "sarcastic tone" since he made his first on-screen appearance on Wednesday, but the straw that broke the judge's back was Ted's constant and belligerent practice of referring to certain email messages as "proposals," even after Avie had repeatedly and clearly stated that they were not. When Ted went one "proposal" over the line, the judge cut him off, ordering him to cease and desist: "It's misleading language and it is not acceptable to me." Considering that this isn't a jury trial, we have to assume that Ted was trying such a cheap mischaracterization in hopes of putting one over on the judge himself-- not a smart move, we imagine, unless you've got one stupid judge. Apparently Jackson didn't fall for it.

Note to Microsoft: you may want to consider benching Ted. Irritating the viewing audience is a sure way to lose ratings, but irritating the judge in a federal antitrust trial is a whole other ball of icky stuff. And based on what we've seen, Avie's testimony still stands very strong, with less doubt cast on his credibility than Warden was able to throw at the previous witnesses. Ted was good for the comic relief of making the judge yell, but he's a one-trick pony and we doubt he'll stay on the show for long. (Then again, we were hoping that Scott Hope would get vamped and staked two episodes ago...)