Sigh... We're trying hard to stay open-minded about the whole Sears iMac rollout, we really are. Overall, the Mac community seems to be walking a surreal line between picking a fight and being overly charitable. On the one hand, we're all more than a little tired of the way things turned out at CompUSA and, especially, Best Buy-- poorly-maintained demo Macs, boxes and ladders blocking access to the Apple merchandise, salespeople who would ignore people who wanted to buy a Mac, other salespeople who would push the PCs instead, and even salespeople who would flat out insult anyone who dared to consider getting a Mac instead of a Wintel box. Given all that ugly history, Mac users are quick to find fault with Sears in hopes that any problems can be corrected before "Best Buy Syndrome" takes up permanent residence.

On the other hand, having seen the whole Best Buy relationship shatter into a gazillion pieces, many Mac users are advocating patience and understanding as Sears ramps up its whole iMac-selling operation. The logic there is that we want to foster a friendly and loving relationship with Sears and its 800 stores nationwide-- too much criticism up front will just make them defensive and mean. Fair enough; after all, selling iMacs isn't like selling other appliances, or even other computers, and it'll take time to get things right. CompUSA, while still far from perfect, is miles better overall than it was at the commencement of the whole store-within-a-store thing. So we're trying very hard to give Sears the time it needs to set things up right.

That said, we had been given every indication that the "official" iMac-at-Sears launch date had moved from last weekend to this weekend. Unfortunately, we don't see a whole lot of difference in the reports coming in from the field; it's a week later, but the display iMacs are still not running demo software, there are still no brochures, and the price is still $1299-- a hundred bucks higher than anywhere else. About the only positive development we've yet seen (and it's a bit of a stretch to call it "positive," really) is that the reason for the higher price has been explained by special promotions throughout this month, during which customers will be able to take 5% off the iMac's price. That puts the final cost at $1234, which still isn't terrific, but at least it's a bit better. And you can put it on your Sears card...