iMac-mania spawns a case of 'midnight madness'
More than a dozen stores in the San Francisco Bay Area alone will start selling the iMac at midnight Friday, and retailers said they expect an onslaught of buyers.
CompuTown, with five stores in and around San Francisco, has had an iMac promotional balloon floating above its downtown store for more than a week to promote the computer.
"We will have in-store demos of the iMac by Apple employees on Saturday" and offer reduced prices on upgrades, said CompuTown spokeswoman Ayesha Khan. The downtown San Francisco store started receiving iMacs on Thursday afternoon and was expecting the rest of its shipment Friday.
Radio broadcasts
CompUSA, the nation's largest computer retailer, is not planning midnight sales, but all 160 CompUSA stores will have in-store demos by Apple employees on Saturday and Sunday, the first two days of the iMac's launch. CompUSA said it will also offer real-time radio broadcasts of the demos.
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Earl Swede, general manager of CompUSA's downtown San Francisco store, said, "We will have enough machines in stock to cover all our advance orders, and [we] expect a lot of new customers. We have handled big product launches before, so crowd control won't be a problem."
Demonstrations set
Apple will provide iMac demos in the San Francisco CompUSA store from noon to 5 p.m. on the weekend, Swede said, and his sales staff has been briefed to answer iMac questions.
A CompUSA spokeswoman said the company couldn't release the number of iMacs already ordered. For several weeks now the stores have offered an Apple coupon book that it said is worth $800 on accessories and software.
ComputerWare, an all-Mac retailer in California, is running several special iMac promotions. Jeff Walker, retail vice president, said ComputerWare stores will offer sale prices from midnight Friday to 2 a.m. Saturday, and the first 600 buyers will receive a free T-shirt and GoLive CyberStudio Personal Edition software. "We also have instant rebates up to $100 on any three additional items for iMac buyers through Sept. 7," Walker said.
Trade-in allowances
The company is also offering trade-in rebates of $100 to $150 on top of its standard $100 trade-in allowance, to customers who bring in Performas, Power Macs, PowerBooks and other hardware and then buy an iMac.
Keiran Downie, manager of ComputerWare's downtown San Francisco store, said, "We've had hundreds of advance orders for the iMac -- more than any product in our history, even more than for Mac OS 8."
Downie said the store will give priority to customers who prepaid for the computer and expects to have enough iMacs to meet demand.