The Grand Opening of CompUSA's Apple "store-within-a-store" is now over, and if today's AtAT excursion to the Brighton, MA store was any indication, things may be going pretty well for Apple indeed. True, not everything was perfect-- even in the Grand Opening high-profile situation, a few of the Macs were off or crashed. The eMate had had its stylus stolen. And while there were plenty of Apple representatives there to demo the G3's, there were no CompUSA employees to be found. (When we asked one of the Apple reps where we could find a LocalTalk file-sharing cable, he said we'd have to talk to a store representative, glanced around to find one, and then apologized profusely.) In addition, we've gotta say, CompUSA is one seriously cluttered warehouse that we're not sure is necessarily the best place to be the sole national Mac retail environment.

In our experience, though, the positives far outweighed the negatives. First, and perhaps most importantly, the Apple section of CompUSA was packed with customers the whole time we were there. The Apple reps who were giving demos of the G3 machines were always busy. One woman who was receiving a Photoshop demo on a G3 was astonished at how easy everything was to use, and remarked "I could really use this." And on the way out, it was nice to see a guy at checkout happily wheeling his new 17" Apple monitor out to his car. In addition, CompUSA's Sunday circular included a four-page insert that focused exclusively on Apple computers and Mac peripherals and software.

After seeing how much customer interest there was in Apple's products today, we're much more inclined to believe that Apple just may pull a profit this quarter after all. (Plus, the multi-colored pens they were handing out were way cool. You can never have too many pens. Really.) Keep in mind, though, that not everyone shared our experience-- several viewers wrote in to say that the Apple sections of their local stores were nearly empty. Your mileage may vary.