So there's been a lot of blustering lately about how Apple has been keeping what few G4 iMacs that dribble off the assembly lines primarily to itself instead of playing nice and sharing the goodies with the rest of the class. It's tough to deny that Apple's own retail stores have suspiciously more iMacs in stock than most of its third-party resellers, and anyone with two brain cells to rub together might have trouble reconciling that situation with Apple's promise that, when it came time to determine who got the goods, it would never stock its own shelves over those of its faithful and long-suffering authorized resellers. As any reasonable soul might conclude, yes, Apple probably broke its promise-- but just how badly is that harming other Mac stores?

Well, according to Capitol Mac of Richmond, Virginia, the hurt goes long and the hurt goes deep. Yesterday, MacMinute reported that the reseller was shutting down after twelve years in business because Apple's "competitive tactics and anti-reseller policies" left the store with "no choice." The buzz around the hive is that Capitol Mac specifically claims to have been torpedoed by competition from the Tysons Corner Apple retail store in McLean and by a complete and utter inability to get flat-panel iMacs in stock at a time when customers just don't want to buy anything else.

Say what, now? We don't know the first thing about Capitol Mac, but it strikes us as odd that an otherwise-healthy business could be struck down by competition from a store two hours away-- let alone by shortages of a product that was only announced two months ago, and that has only been available for purchase anywhere for about the past five weeks or so. Still, if you're the type that's looking for evidence that Apple's unfair supply policies are Pure Concentrated Evil™, perhaps Capitol Mac would be a nice cautionary tale with which you could frighten young children.

Or perhaps not. We've been getting a lot of mail from former Capitol Mac customers blaming the store's demise not on the same dearth of iMacs that all resellers have had to weather, but rather on such completely-unsubstantiated-by-us factors as outrageous prices ("RAM costing more than at the Apple Store") and management nightmares straight out of the Dilbert Zone. And the point is moot now anyway, since faithful viewer Matt Wolfe notes that MacNN is now reporting that Capitol Mac is not closing, because of "a last minute tentative agreement" between the store and "a yet-to-be-announced investor."

Suspicious? Hey, you know us-- we're firm believers in the notion that paranoia is a perfectly acceptable lifestyle choice. The fact that suddenly everything's okay again and tomorrow's "final liquidation sale" has now turned into a "normal closeout sale" (with appropriately less impressive bargains, we assume) may well get you wondering whether the entire story was a massive bait-and-switch scam to get free publicity for a Saturday sales event. But don't expect us to make any accusations... we're just riding the crest of the drama wave.