Okay, so Apple has its own retail stores, now, and by all accounts they kick major booty-- so why should any of us care whether or not Apple's other retailers are performing below par? Well, the short answer is that while, for instance, CompUSA has over 200 locations across the country, Apple so far has, um, two. And strange as it may seem, most people aren't willing to drive a few hundred miles just to window-shop for computers. So while in a perfect world we'd love to let the more awful Mac retail outlets just die their well-deserved deaths, Apple is taking the much smarter path and trying to improve them.

If you're one of those scary people with a memory capable of retrieving data stored over a month ago (what are you, some kind of cyborg or something?), then perhaps you recall Apple launching a pilot program in April intended to improve the retail Mac-buying experience. To recap, Apple stationed one of its own employees in each of eighteen CompUSA stores in the Dallas and San Francisco areas; these brave soldiers were ordered to ensure that Apple gear was adequately stocked, demonstrated, and sold-- as well as to train the actual CompUSA employees in the ins and outs of Apple technology. Sounds like an uphill battle, doesn't it? But apparently it paid off.

According to MacNN, the test program was a rousing success; we take that to mean that the Apple "stores within stores" at those eighteen CompUSA locations are now considerably less dank, are staffed by employees who no longer tell shoppers that Apple went out of business, and contain working demo Macs that were manufactured sometime within the past three years and aren't actually on fire. This improvement has apparently so impressed Apple's management that the company has decided to expand the program nationwide by the end of this year.

That's good news for two reasons. First of all, it means that every CompUSA store is probably going to improve to some degree, so fewer shoppers will equate the name "Macintosh" with the phrase "half-melted translucent computer smoldering gently in the corner as sparks shoot out of it and ignite the software aisle." Secondly, it proves that Apple isn't as short-sighted as we are, and isn't betting everything on the Apple Stores; instead, it's actively working with its existing retail partners instead of just letting them wither and die. So rejoice! Retail salvation is at hand, and not just in Apple's own boutiques.