Ahhh, price wars-- what a beautiful thing, hmmm? In the middle of last week, Best Buy launched a nasty strike on other iMac resellers, which we assume was prompted by slow sales when compared to the other guys like CompUSA, who had some really attractive bundling deals set up. What Best Buy did was send everyone into a tizzy by dropping their price on the iMac from the standard $1299 to $999. Suddenly, the iMac was a sub-$1000 machine-- even though Apple didn't see it that way. As far as Apple's concerned, the iMac is still a $1299 unit. Best Buy's playing by their own rules.

Anyway, things got even crazier when Best Buy suddenly noticed that they were selling a lot of $999 iMacs. And we mean a lot-- so it wasn't too long before Best Buy's higher-ups realized that they had maybe priced things just a wee bit too competitively. On Friday morning, the official Best Buy price for an iMac rose a bit to $1099, though it took a while for the word to spread throughout all of the stores. In fact, we'd be willing to bet that there are still at least a few Best Buy outlets out there that are still selling iMacs for the magical price of $999. Grab 'em if you can find 'em. (Reportedly, $999 is actually below Best Buy's cost for an iMac, so they were losing money on every unit sold. Kinda makes us wonder how that price ever snuck through in the first place, but we don't claim to understand retail sales.)

While Webintosh originally reported that Best Buy raised their price due to Apple pressure, a MacWEEK article states otherwise, quoting both Apple and Best Buy representatives as saying that Best Buy alone determines its prices. Whatever. The really interesting bit about all this is that CompUSA fought back: reportedly, several CompUSA stores had a special $999 price on iMacs this past weekend, as part of the final push to sell on the last shopping weekend before Christmas. If this kind of struggle keeps going, pretty soon the iMac will be a $1299 computer in Apple's eyes only.