The Grand Opening of CompUSA's Apple "store-within-a-store" is now over, and if today's AtAT excursion to the Brighton, MA store was any indication, things may be going pretty well for Apple indeed. True, not everything was perfect-- even in the Grand Opening high-profile situation, a few of the Macs were off or crashed. The eMate had had its stylus stolen. And while there were plenty of Apple representatives there to demo the G3's, there were no CompUSA employees to be found. (When we asked one of the Apple reps where we could find a LocalTalk file-sharing cable, he said we'd have to talk to a store representative, glanced around to find one, and then apologized profusely.) In addition, we've gotta say, CompUSA is one seriously cluttered warehouse that we're not sure is necessarily the best place to be the sole national Mac retail environment.

In our experience, though, the positives far outweighed the negatives. First, and perhaps most importantly, the Apple section of CompUSA was packed with customers the whole time we were there. The Apple reps who were giving demos of the G3 machines were always busy. One woman who was receiving a Photoshop demo on a G3 was astonished at how easy everything was to use, and remarked "I could really use this." And on the way out, it was nice to see a guy at checkout happily wheeling his new 17" Apple monitor out to his car. In addition, CompUSA's Sunday circular included a four-page insert that focused exclusively on Apple computers and Mac peripherals and software.

After seeing how much customer interest there was in Apple's products today, we're much more inclined to believe that Apple just may pull a profit this quarter after all. (Plus, the multi-colored pens they were handing out were way cool. You can never have too many pens. Really.) Keep in mind, though, that not everyone shared our experience-- several viewers wrote in to say that the Apple sections of their local stores were nearly empty. Your mileage may vary.

It's been confirmed, in a sense-- seeing that the Powerbook G3 had disappeared from the Apple Store and wound up on Apple's discontinued list heavily implied that Wall Street and Main Street, Apple's new Powerbooks, were going to be introduced very, very soon. Like, say, tomorrow, or Tuesday at Seybold at the latest. While this was in stark contrast to recent rumors claiming that the new laptops were to be delayed until June, we remained hopeful.

That's why we're so happy to hear that faithful viewer Steve Pissocra heard what is presumably the real deal from the Apple sales rep he met at the Cincinnati CompUSA. In his own words, "the new Powerbook line goes ON SALE TOMORROW! Hot dog! Starting at $1999." Sounds great-- a $1999 G3-based Powerbook, at last. And since the 2400/180 was just discontinued as well, that bodes well for the introduction of Mighty Cat, the rumored 2400/240. Good news for fans of tiny Powerbooks, like us. It won't be long before we can see for ourselves what the new offerings are, by checking out the Apple Store.

Incidentally, the same Apple rep claimed that Steve Jobs would publicly disclose more details on the super-mysterious Apple Media Player in his keynote address on Tuesday. Believe it or not, that's the bit that makes us doubt his word at all; we at AtAT still assume that Apple will keep pretty tight-lipped about the Columbus project for some time to come. Still, it's definitely possible that the recent unwanted media attention has forced Steve to say at least something about his "project with no name." (That never prevented him from completely ignoring Rhapsody, the Apple NC, etc. in keynotes past, but you never know.) We can hardly wait for Tuesday...

As noted previously, Fry's Electronics has jumped on CompUSA's bandwagon and has opened it's own Apple store-within-a-store in its new Sunnyvale, CA location. (That's Sunnyvale, not Sunnydale, in case you were worrying about a potential vampire infestation.) At first we felt this was simply good news because it represented an increased interest in selling Apple computers in the retail sector. But after reading Apple's report on the opening, the event was noteworthy in its own right.

Remember earlier, when we referred to the CompUSA environment as a "cluttered warehouse?" It seems that this new Fry's is an entirely different animal. Yes, it's still a warehouse-- a 60,000-foot one, at that-- but this one just happens to be "paved in Italian marble tile and dressed up in fine wood detailing." And since shopping for a new system while logy is a mite dangerous (what if you accidentally bought a 6500 instead of a G3?), Fry's includes a cafe where you can get nicely wired before blowing your whole savings account. Just take a look at the pictures at Apple's site for a sense of how serious this place it. All this in a store large enough to justify eighty checkout cashier stations. Yow.

It's a shame that not all stores can be as magnificent as this new Fry's sounds. At least, it would be a shame if we could be guaranteed that such luxurious trappings wouldn't jack up the prices of the merchandise. Given that this is the real world (sorta), we've got to assume that the money comes from somewhere. Still, we at AtAT would love to shop in a store as majestic as the new Fry's appears to be-- window shopping, at least, costs nothing.