For those of you who thought the magic was gone, think again. Sure, April's retail sales figures told a heartbreaking story as the iMac fell out of the PC Data Top 5 for the first time since its introduction in August of last year, but hope springs eternal; while naysayers held that the iMac was on its way out, the iMac faithful quietly noted that the combined sales of all iMacs-- Bondi and fruit-flavored and every revision ever made-- actually would have taken the number one slot. Unfortunately, not all iMacs are created equal, so that's not a particularly fair way to present things; still, it gave us hope that as the cheap discontinued iMacs got snapped up, the current iMacs would once again regain a position within the coveted Top 5.

And sometimes things work out just the way you want them to-- even in the Apple world. You can't keep a good computer down; the May numbers are out, and according to a Mac Observer article, the 333 MHz iMac has clawed its way back into the limelight and claimed Slot Number 3. That places our fruit-flavored friend just above a couple of Hewlett Packards and just below a pair of Compaqs. Sounds like some kind of contrast sandwich; ease of use and elegant design between two slices of mediocrity. (Does that come with a pickle?)

Only numbers in future months will reveal if April's dip was just a fluke caused by remaining Bondi iMacs in the channel and the switchover from 266 MHz to 333 MHz fruit-flavored models. It's certainly possible that May's increase was just a temporary spike, instead-- but we doubt it. Bondi Blue iMacs finally seem to be disappearing from the catalogs and stores, meaning that overall iMac sales won't be split between several different models. At least, that'll be true until Apple releases the next big iMac revision, which may happen as soon as next month. But hey, June's numbers ought to be impressive, at least...

Hands up, who remembers Be? A few years ago, the BeOS was the subject of most of the buzz around the Apple water cooler; back when Apple finally saw that Copland, its semi-modern next-generation version of the Mac OS, just wasn't going to happen, Gil Amelio and co. decided to "Think Different" ages before Apple adopted the slogan as a marketing hook. Gil actually crashed through Apple's long-standing "Not Invented Here" snobbery and decided to look for outside help; Apple went shopping for technology that would form the basis of a new Mac OS. And for a while, Be's fledgling operating system looked like a lock-- so much so that, if we recall correctly, both MacUser and Macworld ran cover stories on the BeOS touting it as the forerunner to what we'd all be running on our Macs in a couple of years.

Of course, that's when Steve Jobs walked back in with his Reality Distortion Field running full blast and persuaded Apple to buy his own NeXT company for $400 million, even though in many ways the NeXTStep operating system seemed less suited to Macs than the BeOS did. But even though Be's operating system wouldn't become the next Mac OS, they continued to develop it to run on PowerPC-based Mac hardware-- until Steve stopped giving them the hardware specs necessary to support the latest and greatest Macs, such as the G3. Since then, we in the Mac world have heard less and less about Be, who turned to the Intel side of the fence since Apple wouldn't play ball.

We always wondered how Be would be able to compete on a hardware platform where Windows dominates and Linux is seen as a somewhat unlikely contender-- Microsoft's got the monopoly and Linux has the benefit of being free, so where does the BeOS fit in? But it appears that Be is finally starting to catch on with PC manufacturers who want a media-oriented operating system and who don't want to pay the dreaded "Windows tax." According to a CNET article, two companies are using variants of the BeOS on new consumer-grade products: iDot, who plans to ship low-cost BeOS systems, and Microworkz, who's working on the super-low-cost super-simple "iToaster" (gee, what product-naming bandwagon are these folks jumping on?). AST Research is also planning on shipping high-end BeOS systems for multimedia work. Not that we're making any predictions, here, but let's say Microsoft's ineptness in court starts a chain reaction, the BeOS catches on like wildfire, and in ten years Apple is struggling against the surging tides of Be's massive market share. Wouldn't that just be the perfect irony?

"The iMac is just a toy." Boy, how many times have you heard that tired twist on the age-old argument? The notion that Macs aren't "real computers" (apparently because normal people can use them) dates back to when the Mac first appeared. Heck, Apple's attempts to fight the whole "Mac as toy" image is one of the reasons that the selection of Mac games was so poor for so long-- Apple actively discouraged Mac games development. These days, apparently Apple realizes that people buy toys, and that a playful image isn't harmful when you're selling to the consumer market. So now we've got these colorful iMacs and more new games coming out for the platform than at any other time in history-- and one glace at the sales figures confirms that there's nothing "just" about being a "toy." Of course, that doesn't mean that the iMac isn't a kick-ass computer, as well, though you won't find that little fact interfering with the anti-Mac prejudices of plenty of IT managers out there.

Anyway, we thought it fitting that, as MacCentral points out, while some people think the iMac is just a toy, apparently some toys are happy to make the iMac their own computer of choice. Kisara, a Japanese Barbie-esque doll, has been spotted wearing a "Yum" t-shirt-- a fashion statement made all the more powerful by Kisara's super-model status. There are additional photos of Kisara decked out to the nines in her iMac t-shirt and, um, helmet and goggles. (Hey, who ever said high fashion had to be practical?)

Beyond the whole cuteness factor of a doll wearing a "Yum" shirt, the very fact that an iMac t-shirt is appearing on a Japanese doll is yet another indication of just how deep the iMac's success runs. It's been reported that the iMac is enormously popular in Japan, even more so than here in the U.S. In particular, we've been told that the iMac is the first computer that's ever really sold well to Japanese women, who actually made up more than half of the iMac's Japanese customer base in the early days. Is Kisara's outward iMac fanhood just a plot to indoctrinate millions of little Japanese girls into the Cult of iMac? We certainly hope so.