"Investors Only," reads the big flashing neon sign outside the clubhouse. That's the scenario next week for Apple's annual shareholder meeting. Apple has announced that only shareholders of AAPL will be permitted to attend, and non-investing analysts and reporters will have to get past Bruno the Impressively Violent Bouncer if they expect to get inside. A Reuters article has more.

That's a big change from past years, when the press was allowed to attend. But Apple states that next Wednesday's proceedings are "not a press event," though, of course, analysts who are also investors in Apple will be allowed inside. AtAT presumes that the exclusion of the press is a precautionary measure, just in case things get ugly; back in the beginning of the year, several stockholders were planning on stirring things up in an attempt to get Steve Jobs to step down. The multiple delays of this meeting have given him time to improve things to the point where the proceedings should go pretty smoothly (namely, doubling the stock price and posting two consecutive profitable quarters), but there are no guarantees.

One interesting item on the agenda is Steve's re-election to the board of directors; and while it seems likely that he will be voted in to stay for another year, there was more than a slight chance he'd've been ousted in a vote a few months ago. But in the words of CFO Fred Anderson, "Steve is our leader."

Say goodbye to Quicken, everybody-- the current version, Quicken 98, is the last we'll see. MacCentral discusses Intuit's recent decision to cease the development of Quicken for the Mac, citing a MacWEEK article that broke the news. The reason is the one we're all so used to hearing these days-- further development is simply no longer very profitable, as Mac Quicken sales have declined for three straight years. (This all comes following MacCentral having been assured just a week ago that there was no basis to the rumors of Mac Quicken's imminent demise.)

Just in case you didn't get your recommended allowance of irony this week, consider the fact that Intuit's CEO is Bill Campbell, who not only used to be a president of Apple USA, but is also a current member of the Apple board of directors. Apple's board's got more irony than most people see in a lifetime, with a chairman who owns just one share of Apple stock, and now a board member whose company kills the premiere personal finance software for the Mac platform. What's next? Perhaps Larry Ellison killing Oracle's recent commitment to the Mac platform?

Intuit's move further underscores that Apple will have to address the dwindling market share problem sooner rather than later, or else soon there really will be no software available for the Mac. Personally, we at AtAT have never used Quicken, preferring to track our finances with a curious combination of custom Filemaker Pro databases, cryptic notes scribbled on the backs of junk-mail envelopes, and lots and lots of "educated guessing." But for those of you who do use Quicken, we feel for you-- perhaps Big Bad Steve can grab a lead pipe and "persuade" Bill Campbell to reconsider.

About that recent $55 million profit for Q2: a ZDNet story discusses whether or not it actually means anything positive about Apple's future. Just how much did the company's "slash-and-burn" streak contribute to the bottom line? Given that revenues have "stalled," is the profit the result more of Apple's continued job cuts and research reductions than any kind of sustainable business activity?

Here's the shrinkage factor: staff reductions total 31% from a year ago, and research and development spending is down by 50% or so. That accounts for how Apple can post a profit even though its revenues are down by 12%. (See, sales are up, but prices are down-- so Apple actually brought in less money even though they sold more computers.) There's only so much they can cut before they're going to have to try to stay afloat without tossing things out the porthole. So far, we at AtAT think they've made the right cuts-- though the loss of Newton was painful for us, we'd much rather see the Mac survive and thrive.

We're not particularly worried, overall, given Apple's expectation that revenue growth will return by this December. In fact, we wouldn't be a bit surprised if the Powermac All-in-One contributed to increased revenues before that, as we've seen nothing but gushing reviews of the erstwhile Artemis. (Now if Apple would only ship a home version of the thing...)