Throughout the first several months of Apple's recent recovery, just about every piece of news coverage discussing a step forward on the company's road back to health also postulated that the whole struggle was pointless, since the company was dead/irrelevant anyway. Once the iMac started kicking major hinder, though, we noticed more and more media coverage that accepted that Apple was back, and with a vengeance; there was a lot less of the "Apple posts third straight profit, still on deathbed" kind of thing going on. However, with the recent highly-publicized downgrades of Apple's stock by a couple of big-name financial analysts and the news that the iMac dropped in relative sales popularity last month, we were wondering if we're entering a new era of negative spin.

Certainly the fact that the iMac dropped from its king-of-the-hill position in November sales to third place for December had a few remaining Apple-negative holdouts screaming "I told you so!" with glee. But we won't know for sure whether this marks the turning point in the iMac popularity story until we see how sub-$1000 Bondi blue units and $1199 fruit-flavor ones affect the sales numbers, so reports of the iMac's "death" are at this point greatly exaggerated. Regardless, it's an opening for all kinds of anti-iMac backlash, which might get pretty ugly if the January numbers show a continued downward slide for the iMac's popularity. In the meantime, though, PC Data seems to be in the iMac's corner, given the positive vibes in their recent press release.

Here's the feel-good fact for Apple's feel-good computer: despite the December downturn, the iMac was still the number one selling personal computer (both at retail stores and via mail order) during the October-through-December holiday shopping season. Apparently those November sales figures were huge. For the holiday quarter, the iMac beat out offerings from Compaq and Hewlett Packard to grab the top spot, increasing Apple's market share to 9.6 percent. That's compared to 6.7 percent in the quarter six months before. And in a further distinction, the iMac was the only computer to make the top-five list each and every month since its introduction. Whaddaya know? Some positive spin, thanks to PC Data. Bring on the January figures!

Several AtAT viewers have contacted us with theories as to why Apple would have cancelled the first of three Winter Demo Days events-- some more colorful than others. Probably the most widely-reported speculation was that the promotional kits to be used by the stalwart Demo Days volunteers just weren't done in time for this weekend's retail hootenanny-- a sensible guess, though not particularly engaging. Few, if any, viewers seemed to place much stock in our theory involving a Steve Jobs alien clone hybrid making decisions designed to throw Apple into a tizzy. (We admit, it's a little less likely than the promo kits theory, but hey, it could happen.) Anyway, the point's now moot, because Apple has released the official reason for the cancellation.

According to Insanely Great Mac, several volunteers received email from Apple explaining that this weekend's event was cancelled due to demand for the new products, such as the fruit-flavored iMacs and the new blue-and-white Power Mac G3. Of course, when Apple says the problem is "demand," they usually mean that the real problem is "supply;" there just isn't a high enough level of inventory in the stores to justify a Demo Days promotion, since the volunteers would just be persuading customers to buy products that weren't actually available. But fear not; Apple expects plenty of product to hit the channel in time for next weekend's shindig, and we hear that volunteers who were supposed to work the cancelled gig will still be paid. Apple did the Right Thing™.

We at AtAT suppose we'll grudgingly accept the "official" explanation as the likeliest-- after all, Apple's been notoriously slow at getting newly-released products into stores in the past, so why should they be any different now? We suppose that lack of supply may also explain why the commercials for the new products that Apple showed at the Expo still have received very limited airplay-- we did see the "Rainbow" iMac commercial on NBC tonight, though. Ah, well-- believe us, we're not retiring the alien hybrid theory any time soon, though. After all, there's still that little matter of the cancelled Super Bowl commercial to explain, and we haven't heard a better theory yet...

And the question on everyone's lips for the last week has been, "Just what the heck is going on with Apple's stock?" After all, it got as high as $47.50 last week just before Apple announced their fifth consecutive profitable quarter, beat Wall Street's estimates, showed year-over-year revenue growth, and revealed some seriously improved sales numbers and fantastic gross margins. And right after all that great news came out, AAPL plummeted 11 percent the very next day. Okay, sure, a big-name analyst downgraded the stock, alleging that Apple was guilty of "channel-stuffing" to raise the iMac's sales numbers (an allegation that, by the way, several have since refuted), and sure, plenty of investors saw the three-year-high and decided to sell at a tidy profit because a great thing can't last forever. But even since then, Apple's stock price has taken a steady slide into the high thirties. So what's up?

Hey, don't ask us, we just work here. To us, the stock market is this big scary magical thing that behaves randomly and with little to no regard to Things As They Are™. But our buddy John Farr over at AppleLinks pointed out something that casts a little light on the most recent decline: Eric Yang's excellent Apple Investors site notes that several Apple executives have filed to exercise their stock options and sell to make some cash. Most notably, head marketing dude Mitch Mandich is selling off a chunk of AAPL, and this might have contributed to the price's decline. Perhaps there's this sense that when even the marketing guys start selling off their stock in their own company, they know something that we all don't.

But, of course, that's probably not an accurate way to interpret the sell-off. Remember that several Apple execs get most of their compensation in the form of stock options, not a paycheck. In order to raise some actual cash instead of just sitting on a big pile of paper, they occasionally need to sell some of their stock. As Apple Investors wisely points out, "the selling should probably be viewed as portfolio diversification rather than signs of lack of confidence in Apple." So, sure, maybe Mitch and the boys want to buy some stock in some other companies. Or maybe they all just want yachts. Who knows? The point is, it's their money, they earned it for a job well done, but they need to sell some stock in order to get it. Now, if that artificially deflates the price of AAPL, well, then that might mean it could be a good time for others to buy. Personally, though, we keep our money well away from the stock market; one minute it's a Magical Money Photocopier, and the next it's a Magical Money Paper-Shredder. Too incomprehensible for us, thank you very much-- we'll just keep feeding the piggy bank.