Best Buy is gonna sell the Mac Mini
Cool:
Confirmation of the decision came early Thursday with the posting on Best Buy's Web site of word that the top-of-the-line, $599, 1.42 gigahertz (GHz) Mac mini would be "coming soon" to retail stores (see Web site screen shot below), but that the low-end, $499, 1.25 GHz model would not be sold be sold at its brick-and-mortar locations.
Seems a little odd that they'll be selling the cheaper iPod Shuffle, but not the cheaper Mac Mini. This should be good for volume, if they actually sell well at Best Buy. It looks like they'll have a sort of mini-kiosk available, so that'll hopefully help some. Volumes could be written on Apple's relationships with Best Buy over the decades, which have always started with a bit of fanfare and then whimpered out fairly quickly.
Worth watching, and a bit part will be how well they're pushed. A few years ago, I stopped in the Chicago CompUSA and had a chat with the guy who was running the 'store within a store', and was surprised to learn that Apple had actually flown him there from California in order to try to pump up sales. To hear him talk, it made a lot of difference, with him selling as many mac-related things in one day than they normally moved in a week.
Someone gave me the heads up that Target pulled it because of supply concerns. Best Buy says within 30 days, so hopefully Target will be back on board then.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJanuary 28, 2005, at 04:41 PM
Oh, so Target.com is going to sell Mac Minis... cool!
Actually, the Best Buy deal is cooler because I live 3 blocks from one. Better than going the 3.5 miles to an Apple store or the 7.4 miles to the other one, or the 10.6 miles to the other one.