To most everyones surprise, the new Intel iMacs are not doing too well in sales. At least not as well as Apple had hoped. Why? Lots of speculation is floating around but after just releasing an update just before Christmas, it didn’t seem like the iMacs would be hard to keep on the shelves. Look at MacWorld, the buzz was for the MacBook Pro, not the iMac.

So how are pre-sales doing for the next generation Apple Macintosh notebook? SvenOnTech called five major Apple Stores around the nation and we received varying stats. Most Apple retail stores are suggesting to pre-order the MacBook Pro online and not in the store. San Francisco will put those that request on a waiting list and will then call them once the store receives actual MacBook Pros in. When we asked the San Francisco store how those where going, we were told, “Pretty good. Several orders this week alone were made.” We got a different response from the other coast when the New York (SoHo) store told us that they were, “Not getting much pre-orders in the store but lots of people are talking about it.” Again, since pre-orders are only done online, we believe the SoHo store to meant the reserve list.

Back to Apple’s home coast, SvenOnTech then made a call to the LA (Century City) store. How are they doing with its reserve list? “In our store, only eight.” “Total?” we asked. “Yes,” responded the Apple Store retail employee.

What about the home of the Chargers? San Diego’s Fashion Valley told SvenOnTech that we couldn’t order in the store and that it wasn’t even doing a reserve list. In fact, the question caught our Apple Store employee off guard, as if it was a new and alien concept. San Diego told us that they are getting, “Lots of phone calls,” for the MacBook Pro, though.

How is the first Apple Store in Santa Clara doing? Well Valley Fair told SvenOnTech that the reserve list is at, “about a half dozen on it right now.”

While it appears every store is handling the pre-orders different with or without a waiting list, they all are consistently encouraging customers to pre-order online. So that is were the accurate gauge is going to come if the MacBook Pro is going to do better then the iMac is doing. Since Apple does not reveal any sales figures, SvenOnTech was unable to get any hard facts as to how many pre-orders have been made at Apple.com. From what we heard in our calls to the various stores and what we saw at MacWorld, SvenOnTech feels that the laptop will do much better then the desktop Mac. It makes more sense since the PowerBook was in hurt and in need of a major upgrade, while the iMac wasn’t.

Here at SvenOnTech, we’re holding out until next month. Seems like Amazon has got it for a few dollars cheaper and since we have a few hundred in gift certificates, that may be the way we go to get one of these. Or maybe we’ll just hold out until after in case the figures are low and we can grab some extra incentives to get the hot new Intel Mac.

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