Well, so much for all those stories about the iMac's flagging popularity. You know the ones-- they all said that since demand in September wasn't as high as demand in August, the iMac was on the way out. That rather simplistic conclusion ignores the legions of Mac fans who had been waiting to buy an iMac since it was announced three months before its eventual release; of course sales would spike highest in August, as pent-up demand was fulfilled. But anyway, the media was full of stories about how the iMac was a flash in the pan. However, the latest sales data from CompUSA would seem to indicate that the iMac will be flashing for a while longer. A CNET story has some encouraging news.

One of the biggest obstacles to the iMac becoming a monumental market share builder is its $1299 price tag. Yes, it's a very good price for all you get, but consumers think in megahertz. Time and time again we are told by curious Wintel users that they're intrigued by the iMac, but they can't see paying $1299 for a 233 MHz computer. (Once we show them specs and benchmarks that indicate the G3 is much faster than the Pentium II at equivalent clock speeds, they warm up to the idea.) Now that there are $599 computers out there, the iMac's sticker price (which struck us as pretty shockingly low when it was announced in May) is looking higher and higher. We'd love to see Apple drop the iMac's price, if such a move were economically viable, but we doubt it'll happen before next year. So in order to pull in more iMac customers, CompUSA ran its own promotion that effectively lowered the overall price of the iMac: they "gave away" printers and scanners.

And lo, the consumers rejoiced: according to a CompUSA press release, because of the free printers and scanners promotion, iMacs "continue to gain momentum." Between the free peripherals and Apple's new $29.99-a-month payment program (which wasn't even advertised until this week), the weekend's sales were the highest since the iMac first debuted on August 15th, making the little blue powerhouse "the best selling personal computer in CompUSA's history." Nice job! Now can CompUSA sustain this level of interest? The holidays are approaching fast...