We're sure you've all heard by now, but for those of you who spent the last day or so engrossed in a "Full House" marathon collecting evidence for your "Olsen Twins as Live Troll Dolls" theory, Apple's winning streak continues: not only did they post their sixth consecutive quarterly profit, but they also managed to beat Wall Street's estimates yet again. Those high-falutin' financial analysts were predicting a profit of about $85 million, but Apple's black ink for the second quarter actually hit about $50 million higher than that. An Apple press release dishes all the dirt on where the money came from last quarter.

Every dark cloud may have a silver lining, but this cloud is nothing but silver. Compared to the same quarter a year ago, profits are up $80 million (or nearly $40 million if you ignore one-time gains and charges), revenues were up a respectable 9%, and gross margins rose from 24.8% to 26.3%. Okay, so there's a little dark smudge-- Apple's profit in Q2 wasn't as big as Q1's $152 million, but Q2 is usually Apple's weakest quarter so we can't let that dampen our spirits. After all, it's great to see that Apple's still on an upswing, showing year-over-year growth for its second consecutive quarter; in fact, Apple's now growing faster than the computer industry as a whole. IDC claims that the industry growth is 14%, while Apple's unit growth was 27%-- nearly twice that. We can expect to see bigger installed-base market share numbers if this trend continues.

The biggest news of all, however, is that we have a winner for our quarterly "Beat the Analysts" contest. Kirby Lambert proved he's just a wee bit more in tune with Apple's money vibe than all those high-paid analysts, since he predicted Apple's $135 million profit right on the nose. Congratulations to Kirby, who will receive a copy of Star Warped by Parroty Interactive just in time to prepare for next month's Episode 1: The Phantom Menace premiere. And the rest of the faithful viewers who entered should feel proud that their consensus (about $108 million), while a little on the short side, still beat the pants off the Wall Street estimates. Start gearing up for next quarter's contest! It's never too early to drag out those spreadsheets...

Hey, speaking of market share (and we sort of were a while ago... at least, we mentioned it. It's a valid segue, honest!), MacCentral reports that Apple's is, unsurprisingly, on the way up. PC Data, those lovable little bean-counting gnomes who keep us informed about who's buying how much of what, say that Apple's share of the retail and mail order market for the first two months of 1999 was 11.3%, twice as high as it was a year ago. Just goes to show you what a little iMac-y goodness can do to a company's slice of the pie.

On top of that, ZD Storeboard claims that Apple's market share in February was 12.5%, or one out of every eight computers sold. That's impressive on its own merits, but the thrilling bit is that it's the highest Apple's share has been since the iMac first blasted onto the scene last August; apparently the new flavors introduced in January (and the fact that you could actually find them in February) have rekindled the fire. If Apple can keep availability at a reasonable level despite that fire in LG's Mexico plant and they advertise the iMac's new 333 MHz speed at the same low $1199 price, we bet that the third-quarter results could be spectacular-- especially since the third quarter is apparently the big buying season for the educational market.

Oh, yeah; there's also all that business about new "Lombard" PowerBooks to throw into the sales mix. There's no telling what that'll do to the overall sales figures-- but we bet it'll be pretty cool. ;-)

As if another street-beating quarterly profit weren't enough good news for one day, Apple also formally announced the latest iMacs, now running at a mind-bending 333 MHz. If you've been paying attention, you knew that these were coming; in fact, they've been here for a week or so already, if you know where to look. If you're shopping for a fruit-flavored iMac, make sure you get a 333 MHz model-- the 266's are great, but you don't want to end up paying full price for one.

We found it noteworthy (and just a little bit funny) that after all the rumors that these new iMacs would include Cherry and Banana flavors taking the place of Strawberry and Tangerine, Apple makes it very clear that the new systems are still only available in the same five colors introduced last January. In fact, it makes us even more suspicious that the Cherry/Banana rumor originated from Apple's top brass in an attempt to ferret out a leak that's been giving them grief, and this is just one more way to say "ha ha" in a Nelson Munce voice. It's pure speculation on our part, but one thing's clear: the tone of the press release's first sentence strongly emphasizes that people shouldn't wait for new colors any time soon.

By the way, Apple's still pushing BYTEmark performance as the basis for their "Pentium-toasting" claims; the new iMacs score an 11.1, while a Pentium III running at 500 MHz gets a 6.7. For the incredulous (and that should include most people with a sense of perspective), Apple also gives an example of real-world gaming performance: Dark Vengeance on a new iMac runs at 26.5 frames per second, while the same game with the same settings on a Compaq 5240 gets 18.3 fps. However, the Compaq uses an AMD K6-2 running at 400 MHz, not a Pentium III/500, which implies that the BYTEmarks are pretty skewed, and 3D game performance depends just as much on 3D hardware as it does on processor speed-- if not more. Have no doubt, the iMac is wicked fast-- but we can't help but feel that Apple's really stretching things sometimes.