Is it just us, or has Apple really lost some steam since last year? 1999 brought us a ridiculous number of new Apple products. There were three revisions to the iMac, including a couple of speed-bumps, the introduction of fruit flavors, and even the refinement of those flavors when the whole system was redesigned from scratch. The Power Mac gained a Graphite makeover and G4 status, and received one further update with the move to all-AGP models and faster graphics. (You could count the clock speed downgrade as a revision, too, if you're really twisted.) The PowerBook shed some weight while gaining faster processors, USB, a translucent keyboard, and a bitchin' glowing logo. And the long-awaited iBook was introduced, finally filling the empty fourth quadrant of Apple's Wacky Cartesian Product Grid. It was truly an embarrassment of riches.

But now we're 42% through 2000, and what have we seen? A new PowerBook that's got some nice improvements under the hood, but looks just like the old PowerBook, with the exception of a couple of FireWire ports. A revision B iBook that's identical except for some more RAM and a bigger hard disk-- unless you go for the Graphite model, which also has 66 MHz tacked onto its clock speed. Nothing new on the Power Mac front. And, perhaps, most importantly, not a single improvement to the iMac. Yes, the translucent space egg was once the quick-change artist of the industry, getting new colors or bigger hard disks or processor bumps more often than Regis appears on TV-- but now it's been eight months since the last update, and frankly, the fans are getting bored.

In fact, if you've been staring in horror as Apple's stock plummets earthward, you can blame it in part on sagging iMac sales. According to MacNN, there's a reason you haven't been hearing about the iMac's placement in the PC Data sales charts for the last several months, and it ain't modesty. Apparently Apple Money Dude Fred Anderson has been telling analysts that iMac sales have been "steadily dropping off since April," and we can only hope that the mucky-mucks at Apple aren't just scratching their heads wondering why.

See, plenty of people got burned by purchasing Bondi Blue iMacs for Christmas of 1998, only to watch Apple bump up the speed, introduce a choice of colors, and cut the price by $100 a couple of weeks later. The way we see it, it's not rumors of new iMacs that are hurting sales-- it's the expectation of a short iMac refresh cycle that Apple itself gave to consumers. There must be plenty of prospective iMac buyers holding off on making their purchases saying, "Eight months? There has got to be a new iMac just around the corner." Stir that in with the average consumer's unyielding hunger for newness, and you've got a recipe for a nice little sales drought. And if the current rumors are correct and we won't see a new iMac until July, well, we can only expect iMac sales to get worse before they get better. That is, unless these worrisome sales figures prompt Apple to ship a new iMac sooner...

Speaking of AAPL's dizzying free fall, we have a few words to say to those of you who took out second mortgages and sold your in-laws into white slavery to buy every share possible at $140. First of all, come in from off that ledge; leaping to your death with Apple stickers plastered all over your naked body is only going to hurt the company's share price even more (probably), and you'd like your Apple shares to be able to cover your funeral expenses at the very least. Besides, things aren't all that dire. Sure, AAPL's dropped from its all-time high of 150 to its lowest point so far in 2000 (it's currently hovering in the low 80s), but that doesn't mean it's not still a sound investment.

There are a bunch of reasons why we think AAPL's been floundering lately. First of all, the whole tech sector got nuked pretty badly by a number of factors-- the looming prospect of a Microsoft breakup, concerns about interest rate hikes, the nagging suspicion that most dotcoms are in fact just thinly-veiled mob tax shelters, etc. Then there's this whole thing about iMac sales flattening out. Related to that is a recent spate of analyst badmouthing; Donald Young at Paine Webber reiterated his "neutral" rating on AAPL and cut his one-year price target to $100, while Dan Niles at Lehman Brothers also jumped on the "neutral" ship, thus sending AAPL lower even as the rest of the techs were rising.

We don't know how much "casual" trading can affect a stock's price, but we've also heard a number of people say they don't want to buy AAPL now because of the impending stock split in three weeks. Their concern is that they will buy, say, ten shares at $80, and since it's after the May 19th "date of record," they won't get their shares split, but will get stuck with the same ten shares at half their value come June 21st. That's not how it works; any shares you buy now include the right to the split. AAPL Investors has a nice article on how that all works, if you're interested. There also may be a lot of people who are waiting for the split just so AAPL's more "affordable"; we can see that. It's just more satisfying to buy twenty shares instead of ten.

For those of you who know we aren't Apple stockholders and are about to draw unfavorable comparisons between the relative locations of our money and our mouth, well, that's valid. But the fact is we've never bought any stock, and if we did, it'd definitely be AAPL-- especially at these bargain basement prices. Sure, it's not like the $13 a share we saw back in the Scary Times, but if you have any faith at all that Apple will continue to build insanely great computing devices, you just have to look at this $80-a-share price and start hearing that "ka-ching!" in the back of your head. So yes, even we are considering getting in while the getting's good. Consider that fair warning, because if we buy, the future of Apple's stock price will then be determined by whichever is stronger: Apple's inventiveness, or our bad luck.

And so another chapter of "Redmond Justice" closes with a bang. Wednesday was Microsoft's deadline for filing its final response to the government's breakup plan, and, true to form, the company resorted to the trademark hyberbole and melodrama we've all grown to love. Faithful viewer Russell Maggio first pointed out a short Reuters article that summed up the company's stance very succinctly: Microsoft calls the government's plan so "defective," "vague," and "ambiguous" that it "defies comprehension." And Russell even beat us to the gratuitous cheap shot by noting that, "gee, that sounds more like a description of their operating system..." (Thank you, you've been a great audience! Tip your waitstaff! I'll be here all week!)

For a more in-depth analysis of Microsoft's latest filing, look no further than The Register, whose take on the subject was duly noted by faithful viewer Jerry O'Neil. Even if you ignore the obvious howlers as noted above, the rest of the company's brief is described as "strange in format and puzzling in intention." Of particular note is this fun little paradox: first Microsoft claims that it honestly and truly assumed that the May 24th hearing (at which the judge denied the request for six more months of hearings) "was to be the beginning-- not the end-- of proceedings on the issue of relief." Then Microsoft goes on to blow that statement out of the water by filing an already-signed Supplemental Offer of Proof "for use solely in the event the Court determined, as the government urged, to terminate the remedies phase of the trial without affording Microsoft discovery or an evidentiary hearing." So much for being caught off guard, right?

Other nuggets of joy include Microsoft's assurance that it had "secreted" nothing (ewwww-- do we really have to hear about Microsoft's secretions?), its argument that "foreign governments" might have to approve the breakup, its request that Windows CE and Windows 2000 Server be excluded from any remedy, its insistence that the two split companies be allowed to do mergers and acquisitions (as in, one merges with the other, perhaps?) and its steadfast claim that-- get this-- it doesn't want to be "forced to violate any laws in any jurisdiction." That last one had us spewing coffee all over the room. All told, there's plenty there to keep us entertained until Judge Jackson issues his final ruling, which could happen any day now. Stay tuned...