Okay, real sales data is rolling in, and according to a CNET article, the market research firm PC Data has some good news and some bad news. The good news is, the iMac is kicking some serious butt when it comes to sales figures; it's been so popular that it propelled Apple back up into the number three spot in the sales market share races for August, up from seventh or so a little while ago. Apple's 13.5% share in August means it now trails only behind Compaq's 30.9% and Hewlett-Packard's 23.2%. A lot of people were hoping that the iMac would help Apple shift back up into the top five. Ta-daaa!

The bad news is, the iMac was not the best-selling single computer for the month of August. (Consternation! Uproar!) That honor goes to HP's Pavilion 6330 (isn't that an eerily Performa-like name and number?), which accounted for 8.6% of all computers sold. The iMac came in second place with 7.1%. See, if only more of you had been as impulsive as we were and rushed out to buy one of the first models, the iMac could have taken the top spot, but nooooo, you had to be responsible consumers, didn't you? For shame. ;-)

Of course, there's still more good news: sure, the iMac came in second, but it also debuted on August 15th. That means the Pavilion that beat it had a two-week head start, but still only won the race by a nose. We'd be willing to bet that if sales data were compared for the thirty-day period beginning August 15th, the iMac would be the hands-down winner. Sure, that would only illustrate the pent-up demand that Mac users have been building for so long while we all waited for a decent consumer-level offering from Apple, but it would still be an impressive sight.

Thanks to faithful viewer "Peachawat," we happened across a very interesting article over at Time Daily, the online news magazine (not to be confused with Tyne Daley of "Cagney and Lacey" fame). That article is entitled "Andy Grove Loves His iMac," and it ranks highly in the list of "Articles We Never Thought We'd See," beaten out only by such unlikely titles as "Bill Gates Leaves Wife Melinda for Janet Reno" and "Scott McNealy Leaves Wife Susan for Bill Gates." The big difference, of course, is that the Grove article is real.

Andy Grove, as most of you know, is Intel's chairman, and therefore when he talks about the computing world, people listen. So when he points to the iMac as the future of computing, that says a lot, especially since the iMac doesn't have Intel Inside. Sorta like if the chairman of Ford admitted he loved his new Subaru. The iMac was "nothing we couldn't have done," claims Grove-- and in fact Intel is planning on releasing their own net-centric translucent blue computer in 2001, a full lifetime later in the computer industry. But at least they're glancing in the right direction.

Grove is likened to "millions of die-hard fans" for complaining about the iMac's lack of a floppy drive. Does anyone else see the irony in Intel's chairman waxing eloquent about the future of computing being network-centric and then complaining about not having a floppy drive? But heck, it's a minor distraction from the big lesson of the article which is this: if the iMac is good enough for TIME's 1997 Man of the Year, it should be good enough for you.