I'm not lighting up any birthday candles for the four-month anniversary of Apple's mini-stores, since the stores have hardly lived up to the hype or promises that were made when they opened last October. The stores seem to have been hastily rolled out, are expensive to build, have nearly-useless point-of-sale machines, and suffer from a sterile design.

The stores were inspired by the Mini Cooper auto, Apple said. "This design will help us carry our philosophy to even more people," Steve Jobs said at the official unveiling at the Stanford Shopping Center (N. Calif.). The "cool" and "hip" design was intended to attract a younger and hipper visitor, the company said.

But in reality, the stores don't live up to any of that. Three of the first and only five mini-stores were sited very close to existing retail stores. In fact, the Stanford mini-store is just 1,300 feet away from the Palo Alto store. So it certainly doesn't seem the mini-stores extend Apple's retail reach to new audiences.

The stores are certainly smaller, but the lease costs aren't necessarily less. The Oak Ridge (N. Calif.) store is about 25 feet wide, but is set into a 35-foot mall space. At other mini-stores, the stores are narrow, but extend way back into the mall.

The construction costs of the stores may not be cheaper, either. The entire interior of the stores is bead-blasted stainless steel manufactured in Japan, and laser cut to exacting specifications. You can only imagine how expensive this type of interior must be to install.

That also doesn't take into account the tens of thousands of dollars that Apple spent on the flooring. You may recall they originally installed carpet, and then ripped it all out and put in a white, translucent epoxy flooring.

Those point-of-sale terminals were also an expensive and ill-designed project. They were expensive to custom-design and build, and have yet to fulfill their promise of allowing customers to process their own purchases. When Apple rushed to open the mini-stores before the holiday shopping season, they left behind the necessary software to allow customer operation. And now, four months later, the software still hasn't been finished or installed. Only store employees can use the machines, which also have an awkwardly-positioned video screen where customers must sign their name, and an eye-level, laser bar-code scanner that zaps your cornea as you walk through the store.

Who came up with the concept of customer-processed purchases in the first place? Sure, 80% of Apple retail store customers use a credit card to make their purchase. But how many of those people want to take over responsibility for scanning their products, swiping their card and signing their name on a video screen? How many customers will be able to understand the check-out machine even if they want to use it--it's completely non-standard and non-intuitive when you approach it.

That nice white epoxy flooring was spectacular on grand opening day, but weeks of foot traffic have reduced the floor to a abstract painting, filled with back heel marks, leaves, hairs and all sorts of other debris. The floor has also suffered two rounds of structural problems, requiring costly repairs at some stores.

And the lighting--whoa! It's a retinal blast-off inside the mini-stores, with strong lights behind the one-piece ceiling, and bright, back-lit wall graphics. Stop at the Sunglass Hut for some ultraviolet protection before you visit a mini-store.

Lastly, where are the rest of the mini-stores? Are we going to see a flood of them in the next few months? And where will they be located? The original plans had mini-stores on university campuses, and Apple has hinted they would fit perfectly in places like airports. But so far, Apple is moving slowly to install new mini-stores. Is this a sign of patience, or an acknowledgement that the stores aren't wildly popular?

It may be early in the mini-store cycle, but not too soon to wonder why this project landed so far off-track. The mini-stores should have been designed more modestly, with less stainless steel and a less sterile flooring material. They should have been located at locations that had no nearby Apple stores--and there are plenty to choose from. They should not have included the "EZ pay" stations, to allow more shelf space for popular items the stores can't now display (G5s and 23-inch Cinema Displays). And they should have installed dimmers on those lights!

Not surprisingly, there appear to be no new mini-stores in the pipeline.

But still…Happy Birthday, mini-stores!