If you don’t live near one of Apple’s brick-and-mortar (OK, often more like glass and steel) retail stores, finding a place to get in a little retail “touchy feely time” (technical term for “a comprehensive tactile and intellectual examination of a computing device to evaluate said device for possible purchase”) with a Mac can be difficult. To save you the effort of looking it up, the nearest Apple Retail Stores are in the Rockingham Park Mall in Salem, New Hampshire (no sales tax) and the Northshore Mall in Peabody, Mass. Both are over two hour drives, although journeys to them will land you in a “real mall”.

Speaking of malls. Hey, Apple! There’s this state in New England, and every single 7th and 8th grader (and a growing number of highschoolers) uses one of your iBooks every day in class. There’s even a mall, located in pretty much the center of the state’s population base, which could house an Apple Retail Store just fine. I know, I know, they call it “The Maine Mall”, and you can’t leisurely stroll outside and sip double-half-decaf-lattes while you shop, but they do have that poorly-located usually-unoccupied space that becomes a Halloween store in October and Christmas store in November. That must qualify it as a “real mall”. But, I digress.

The point of all this (and, yes, Virginia, there is a point to this column) is that, to hold us over until “Apple Store Maine Mall” opens in the mythical future, Apple has opened a “store within a store” just south of The Maine Mall, in Circuit City (next to Michael’s and the Christmas Tree Shoppe).

You can’t miss the new Apple section – its at the very front of the computer section – so the first computer of any kind you see is a big, beautiful 24-inch iMac, which dwarves in style and size the boring gray PC boxes behind it.

With the exception of the MacPro towers, all Mac models, even MacBook and MacBook Pro portables, are on display and fully explorable, as well as peripherals like displays, keyboards, mice, iPods, etc. Plus, there’s an Apple-trained specialist on hand to answer questions, a welcome relief from the Orcs usually patrolling the computer section.

So, the next time you’re down Portland way, check out the new Mac store in Circuit City. You’ll enjoy it – I “garawntee” it.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski