I was reading TUAW awhile back, and they noted that Apple heavily relies on CompUSA in many areas for service and support. In a lot of high-traffic areas, still absent from the Apple Retail Store footprint, CompUSA was the corporate/retail location to take sick Mac systems.

This got me thinking… Apple may need to expedite the plans to bring back the Apple Store mini concept. This was Apple’s plan to deploy Apple Stores in smaller cities where a full-size Apple Retail Store would be a bit overkill.

I know a lot of cities that are still stuck without this infrastructure, and many that don’t even have a CompUSA. Still, the lack of CompUSA stores makes a bad situation worse. Yes, you can drop-ship a padded mailer to fix a sick MacBook, but what about an iMac or Mac Pro? People do worry about what happens when things break, as they should… why else does Apple push AppleCare Protection Plans so much…

I remember one time when my Power Mac G4 had a fried FireWire port on the last day of the three year AppleCare policy. I had to drive for over two hours to the nearest CompUSA in order to have it checked in before the deadline… but I was happy, the nearest Apple Store was even farther away from where I was…

I think Apple has always planed to bring back the Store mini concept, just waiting to saturate large urban areas first. Another option would be to enhance relations with Best Buy, and use their Geek Squad as a drop-ship location for sick Macs. Store mini locations were already drop shipping sick systems in palates back to Apple repair facilities… while Best Buy stores would be handling less Mac-dedicated traffic, it would be a quick fix, and probably much less costly than building hundreds of Apple Store minis.