You thought inept salesmanship and apathy killed it back in '97, but it crawled back from the grave. When it was once again found dead earlier this year, the coroner determined the cause of death to be pig-headed mismanagement and a phobia of multiple colors. But sequels are profitable, no matter how awful they turn out, so prepare yourself for... Best Buy III: Retail Vengeance!

Yes, it's the dysfunctional retail relationship that just won't stay dead. We'd heard the rumors before and were skeptical, but more evidence is coming to light suggesting that Apple is really going to give Best Buy one more chance. The first hint was Apple's decision to ship the "low-end" Kihei iMac in Blueberry only; remember Best Buy's hissy fit over stocking multiple colors? That was what caused the last split-up, so there's been plenty of speculation that Best Buy will sell only that model and keep the iMac DV out of its warehouses. It was only speculation-- but now it's crystallized into rumor. According to a MacWEEK article, "display materials for Apple hardware" have been making their way into at least a few Best Buy stores, possibly in California only, and Best Buy salespeople have been confirming that "the chain will start stocking iMacs as soon as legal issues with Apple are worked out." Reportedly Best Buy wants at least a little piece of the holiday iMac-buying action-- though, if you remember the debacle last year (when Best Buy panicked after incompetent salespeople were unable to move enough iMacs for the holidays, and then slashed the price to well under Apple's minimum), you might be wondering why Apple is bothering to give them yet another chance.

So this holiday season, witness the horror first hand-- if you dare! Poor product displays... Venomously anti-Mac salespeople... A buying experience tantamount to a Bataan death march. It's Best Buy III: Retail Vengeance, and it's coming soon to a retail outlet near you. In Retail, No One Can Hear You Suck!

AtAT's official descriptive phrase for Apple's overall retail presence is this: "less than compelling." That's mostly just us being polite. Judging by what we witness ourselves and what others write in to tell us, the harsh reality is that Apple's retail presence would be better described by a phrase such as "Kill me, kill me now." Sure, there are individual shining examples of stores with a stellar Mac-knowledgable sales force and gleaming product displays in full working order, but on average, we tend to think that Apple would be better off selling Macs out of the back of a truck. (Actually, that's not a bad idea. Perhaps the Apple Mobile could come around on alternate Thursdays...)

For Apple, retail is broken. It's not as broken as it was a few years ago, but it sure isn't fixed, either. So Apple's got two choices, here. First, they can try to fix the retail Mac-buying experience. That's what they've been trying to do for the past two years, with the elimination of uncooperative partners, the establishment of stores-within-stores, etc. That's all made progress, but not enough. The other route would be to move to a sales model that focuses more heavily on direct sales, by boosting the Apple Store-- and several signs indicate that Apple's ready to make that move. A CNET article confirms that Apple has hired Allen Moyer, a retail development guru, possibly with the hope of opening its own boutique stores, à la Gateway Country.

Want more evidence that Apple's planning a big direct sales push? The company just registered shop-different.com and buy-different.com. Right now those domain names just point to Apple's main web site, but it's increasingly obvious that something's going on here. As for just what that is, well, you'll find out when we do.

Oooh, we can tell that some of you are just going to hate us after this. Guess who just scored a particularly sweet deal on a brand-spankin'-new Blueberry iBook? That's right-- none other than your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff. And when we say "sweet deal" we're not talking about $5 below list price and free shipping. We're talking about walking out of the store with a $1599 iBook and a receipt showing $1199.20 plus tax. As in, 25% off. $400 saved. Aren't we despicable?

See, we happen to live nice and close to a Micro Center store, and Sunday they celebrated their 20th anniversary by selling all Apple computers for 20% off. (Why the iBook was 25% off is beyond us; maybe they did the math on a Pentium.) The store was scheduled to open at noon, so Yours Truly figured that if I showed up at 11:30, I'd be golden. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The parking lot was full. There was a line of eager geeks stretching all the way around the enormous building to the back. I finally managed to ditch the AtATmobile and took my place at the end of the line.

I should probably note that at that point, I considered my chances of getting an iBook to be slim to none. Even if the store had any in stock, I figured that the several hundred people in front of me would devour them like a plague of locusts before I even got in the door. When the floodgates finally opened and they let us all in, I made a beeline for the Mac department and pressed into the crowd. And please understand that when I say "crowd," I mean "unruly mob." It was a thrilling, baffling, and potentially life-threatening experience. Folks who wanted iMac DVs were supposed to grab a box and carry it out to the registers; people who wanted any other Apple merchandise were told to wait in what store staff laughably referred to as a "line." So I inched forward as vouchers were handed out-- the golden tickets that could be redeemed for valuable Apple gear at Merchandise Pick-Up. G4s were gone before I even got in the door. Then came the announcement that they'd just sold the last Graphite iMac DV Special Edition. "Basic" iMacs (the Blueberry-only non-DV slot-loading model-- yes, they had them!) were next to go. They hadn't said a thing about iBooks, which I assumed either meant there were still some to be had, or they never had any at all. I thought the latter was more likely.

When I got nearer to the front, I did see a guy walking off with an iBook voucher in his hand and a spring in his step. So there were iBooks available after all! And yes, they had some left when I got to the front of the line-- in Blueberry only. I had missed the last Tangerine one by about two people. Oh, well-- for a $400 savings, we think we can handle Blueberry instead.

Next up: Merchandise Pick-Up. I grabbed a couple of copies of Mac OS 9 off the shelf and went to go stand in another "line." This time, however, the "line" was actually a line, and I was perhaps a mere twenty feet from the front. Unfortunately, Micro Center felt that having only two staffers handling Merchandise Pick-Up wasn't a problem-- despite the fact that some people were opening E*Trade accounts for an additional discount, which was taking up to ten minutes per person. No joke. It took about forty-five minutes for me to move those twenty feet and get to the front of the line-- by which time it had grown all the way up one aisle, back down another, and crossed itself. But eventually I stepped up to the counter, handed over a credit card, signed on the dotted line, and waltzed out with our new $1199 iBook.

As for what we're going to do with the $400 we saved, well, that's easy: we're getting a $99 AirPort card and a $299 AirPort Base Station. While our original justification for an iBook purchase was the necessity of occasionally producing the show while away from our spacious studios in sunny Arlington, MA (the future online entertainment capital of the world-- just you wait!), now we're convinced that the iBook holds the potential to improve the show's production on a daily basis. In other words, once we get this puppy wirelessed, we'll be able to crank out the show the way it was meant to be produced-- namely, with our butts planted firmly on the couch and our gnatlike attention divided squarely between the iBook and the TV. It's like some sort of beautiful dream. Anyway, we hope that some of you were also able to flex your patience muscles and take advantage of Micro Center's money-losing anniversary sale. We haven't felt this good about a Mac purchase since we got our first PowerBook Duo 230 all those years ago for $899...