Woo-hoo! And here we were thinking that Apple's newfound financial health-- signs of year-over-year revenue growth, increased cash reserves, record-breaking inventory numbers, stock price hovering not too far from a five-year high, etc.-- was a double-edged sword as far as AtAT was concerned. See, while an Apple that isn't spurting arterial red ink all over the balance sheets means that our Platform of Choice™ may grow and thrive rather than dying an ugly and sordid thrashing death, and that is, of course, a good thing. But it also means that lots of the juicy angst-ridden rumors that always get spread when the vultures are hovering started to dry up, and that kind of content is AtAT's bread and all-vegetable-based margarine, if you catch our collective drift. After all, without Apple buyout rumors, life just feels a tad... emptier.

So how cool is it that, despite Apple's fairy tale resurgence, rumors of a buyout are once again resurfacing? To AtAT's writers, we're talking manna from heaven. It seems that longtime Mac pundit Don Crabb is behind this latest development; faithful viewer Jerry O'Neil pointed out a Crabb rumor/opinion piece that, inexplicably, seems to have gotten picked up by Yahoo News. Crabb has been quite vocal in the past about his frustration that the new Jobsian Apple seems unwilling to sell into enterprise environments, choosing instead the "niche" of consumer and educational sales. That might color his opinion that Jobs has simply been saving Apple only to sell it off.

To us, it just doesn't ring true. Uncle Steve, if anything, has been saving Apple primarily to thumb his nose at the tech world that saw him ousted from his own company back in the '80s. (There's also the little matter of what appears to be his genuine affection for the company he cofounded in a garage twenty-something years ago, but bile and vengeance are higher ratings-getters than romance any day of the week.) Remember, Jobs admits that he once turned his company over to "bozos" and he vowed that he would never make that mistake again. Personally, we believe him-- otherwise he wouldn't still be sticking around as iCEO. But hey, who can really fathom the motives of the mercurial Mr. Jobs?

How about that? Sears wasn't kidding after all; it looks like they're really serious about this whole iMac thing. Yes, we finally saw the long-fabled Sears commercial with three dads who were, in our opinion, showing possibly just a little too much enthusiasm while balancing checkbooks and writing email to government officials via their iMacs-- but hey, we're talking about Commercialville, here, where housewives wax eloquent about the virtues of non-abrasive bathroom cleanser while grinning like synchronized swimmers or those high school cheerleaders who compete in the national finals. The important thing is, Sears is paying to advertise the iMac, and they seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.

On top of that, as promised, the iMac graces the entire cover of the June 13th Sears Sunday circular, at the "Sears low price" of $1199.99-- less than a buck higher than the standard Apple price, which is a huge improvement over the original $1299 sticker price, especially when you add in the 0% financing available when using one's Sears charge card. And get this: the iMac is the only computer advertised in the entire Sears "Electronic Super Sale" circular. That must be some kind of first.

Of course, things aren't perfect by any means. While the five-flavored iMac "flower" does grace the cover of the circular, that particular shot only shows the top of the iMac, and it's not immediately clear that what's being sold is even a computer. "Just plug it in, switch it on and the internet is at your fingertips." Well, it's a step in the right direction, anyway. We'd also like to see the iMac highlighted on the electronics page at Sears' web site, instead of those WebTV thingies. But between the commercial and this latest circular, we've got to say, we're very optimistic that the Apple-Sears partnership will lead to some very good things-- maybe even good enough that we'll stop waking up screaming from Best Buy-inspired nightmares.

Where we grew up, Sears wasn't the only big fish in the little mall pond; the other large retail department store at the local mall was JCPenney, and so, in our eyes, those were the two department stores in existence. Yeah, there was a Service Merchandise across the street, but really, was there anything there that could persuade us to leave the comfortable cocoon of consumerism known as the mall? I mean, really-- Service Merchandise didn't even have a food court. How gauche.

So yeah, we're darn excited that both Sears and JCPenney are now selling iMacs. The Sears deal is the one everyone's talking about, what with the floor models and the employee training and the commercials and all that, but we talked about the JCPenney rumors back in April, when Apple Insider first broke the news that the iMac would find its fruit-flavored way into JCPenney's massive holiday catalog for 1999. Those rumors have come to pass, as faithful viewer G.W. Ruggles, Jr. points out:

Just got my JCPenney Fall/Winter '99 Big Book. There on page 786 is the iMac. They have it priced at $1399.99. It comes with the regular software bundle plus a special JCPenney bonus software package. This includes "You Don't Know Jack", "Master Cook", "Titanic", "After Dark Screen Savers", "Dr. Brain Thinking Games", "Fisher-Price Big Action Garage", "Davidson Learning Center-Spelling & Grammar", & "Fisher-Price Time to Play Pet Shop". Clearly the focus is on family fun rather than the home office. The big news is that Penney's has totally ditched the Wintel stuff. The iMac is the only computer you can buy through their Big Book. As far as I know, they still have an arrangement with CompUSA to buy stuff through them using a specialty catalog but I haven't seen very much of that catalog lately. However, the Big Book is the showcase and it gets the widest distribution.

Verrry interesting, no? Even with the extra software bundle, $1399 sounds kind of high, but if someone's looking for a computer in the Penney's catalog, it sounds like the iMac is now the only choice. Who knows? If Penney's sells enough iMacs this holiday season, perhaps they'll want to hammer out a deal with Apple to put iMacs into their department stores. By this time next year, Sears might not be the only mall department store with happy translucent computers gracing their floors. Is the iMac destined for Total Mall Domination?