Well, the initial numbers are in (or at least hints of the official numbers, at any rate), and by all accounts, the iMac had a terrifically strong debut weekend. A Bloomberg News article has the qualitative data, if not necessarily some good, scientific quantitative stuff. (We're hoping that the real numbers are positive enough that Apple issues a press release to fill us in, but you never know.)

CompUSA, for instance, isn't saying exactly how many iMacs they sold over the weekend, but they claim the number is in the "thousands," which can't be bad. Veep Larry Mondry states that CompUSA sold more iMacs on Saturday than they've "ever sold of any computer on a single day." That's great news, coming from the biggest U.S. computer retail chain. As for smaller outfits, ComputerWare (a San Francisco chain with ten stores) claims that they sold 225 iMacs between midnight and 2 A.M. and another 200 before the end of the iMac's first day out of the gate, exceeding their "wildest hopes." Several resellers all over the country are reporting that they not only sold all of the iMacs that Apple sent in the first shipment (which isn't all that surprising, given that pretty much every dealer received far fewer machines than they ordered), but they continued to rack up new orders even after running out of stock. And we've seen several reports of customers offering as much as $2000 for the display model when they found out that there were no more boxed iMacs to buy.

So far, so good-- no reports about "disappointing sales" or any of that stuff. In fact, the iMac's launch seems indisputably successful; even people who are dissing the iMac itself can't seem to deny the fact that it sold like crazy once it hit the stores. Now things get interesting; what will happen to the iMac's demand after its introductory weekend? Will remain at its current level, or will it flag suddenly now that the pent-up demand is being satisfied? After all, a lot of big-budget Hollywood movies have a strong first weekend and then disappear without a trace. Of course, the other scenario is that word of mouth from happy buyers (coupled with heavy advertising from Apple) shows iMac demand increasing steadily until the Christmas buying season, when it positively explodes. If that's the case, we just hope that Apple can build enough iMacs to keep up.