We admit it-- we didn't actually tune in to the mammoth four-hour analyst meeting yesterday. We know, we know; "bad AtAT, no donut." But it's one thing to hang on Steve's every word for, say, two hours during one of those awesome Stevenotes (especially when there's actually some video accompanying his spiel to satisfy our demand for eye candy), but four solid hours of audio geared solely for financial analysts? Somehow that just didn't sound like a particularly fun use of our incredibly valuable time. (Well, okay, our time is actually utterly worthless, but still, our local cable channel shows "Saved By The Bell" reruns at 4:30 PM EST, and people just have to have priorities.)

We also didn't expect any real drama during the meeting-- certainly nothing as engrossing as Screech's voice changing, at any rate. Imagine our dismay, then, to have to read over at MacCentral that Steve's presentation to the Wall Street types was actually quite exciting because it was marred by technical difficulties. (Insert jarring and ominous chord here.) Anyone who's ever seen Steve work the stage at Macworld Expo knows that the man wields a remote control like a Jedi knight wields a light saber. He cues up his own slides and keeps the show moving forward with the pacing of the master showman he is. Timing is everything, and while trying to RDF a room full of analysts, Steve needs all of his charms firing on all cylinders. So imagine the terror that must have ensued when Steve's clicker didn't function. Aiiiieeeeeee!!

Once we heard about this nailbiter of a predicament, we had the impetus we needed to brave the financespeak and fire up our QuickTime Player for the rebroadcast. After all, we wanted to hear how His Steveness handled himself when faced with the nightmare of having to address a roomful of big, scary analysts without his trusty clicker. Our first nice surprise was that, for the QuickTime rebroadcast, Apple had broken up the four-hour presentation into three easy-to-digest chunklets: Steve's "Vision, Strategy, Q & A," Phil Schiller's "Hardware Update," and Fred Anderson's "Financial Update." So we were able to zero right in on Steve's demo thrills and spills without having to worry about wading through a sticky morass of gross margins and one-time charges and gains.

So we've since heard Steve's harrowing twenty clickerless minutes, in which he initially sounded a little off his game as he had to move some of the Q & A up front. In between fielding questions from analysts, Steve lobbed queries back to "Wayne," the A/V tech who was presumably sweating hard as he tried to restore the power of Steve's remote. All told, though, Uncle Steve handled the situation deftly and emerged seemingly unscathed. Wayne, for his part, emerged with his job intact-- and thousands of witnesses who heard Steve confirm that fact. Eventually Wayne got the "backup backup clicker" working, and Steve was once again armed to forge ahead with his song and dance, in full control of his-- and Apple's-- own destiny. Whew. When's the movie of the week coming out?

Oh, what, the spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat drama of the "Wayne Incident" isn't enough for you, now? You say that since there's four solid hours of meeting audio out there, and obviously there was at least something noteworthy buried within, you've decided that you want actual substance from us? Geez, you people are pushy. Okay, well, let's go "broad strokes" mode, shall we? We're going to go out on a limb and say that the most important thing we took away from the analyst meeting is a greater confidence in Apple's own forecasts.

First and foremost, we're two weeks past Apple's last earnings statement, and as reported by Reuters, despite what Steve Jobs referred to as the worldwide "economic meltdown" (a classification slightly more dire than most would use, but hey, the man's a straight talker), the company's predictions for the current quarter's results still haven't changed. Despite last quarter's bone-chilling quarter-billion-dollar loss, reigning money dude Fred Anderson is quoted as saying "I really think we are positioned for returning this company to profitability in the March quarter." And as those who have been following Fred's career at Apple for the past few years are approvingly aware, Fred's not often wrong about these things. So here we are, believing that Apple might actually make a few bucks when the results get posted in April.

And if you're a big fan of the "reiteration or proof of earlier predictions" genre of announcements, you're in luck. In addition to Fred's take on Apple's imminent return to profitability, Steve chimed in with some encouraging words about hardware availability. As we've already mentioned recently, PowerBook G4s appear to have started shipping to customers as of a few days ago, and as reported by TechWeb, Steve confirmed that the titanium wonders are indeed now on their way to end users and dealers alike-- thus hitting his original keynote "end of January" ship date, and despite those worrisome "45 days" estimated shipping times reported by the Apple Store. Similarly, he claimed once again that Apple's higher-end Power Mac G4 systems will still ship in February, no matter what people are now saying about March being a likelier time frame. Based on the accuracy of the PowerBook ship date, once again, we find ourselves believing him.

Of course, this increased confidence in Apple's predictions cuts both ways. Most of you are probably aware that Apple is extremely likely to ship new iMacs this month, equipped with CD-RW drives in order to make iTunes more attractive and move forward with Steve's "digital hub" vision. But if any of you were holding your breath for a new high-end Special Edition iMac with one of those sexy new SuperDrives built in, you should probably exhale now; Steve made another forecast in response to an analyst's question, and that was that the DVD-writing SuperDrive won't filter down into Apple's consumer products until next calendar year. So if you're jonesing for the ability to burn your iMovies right onto your own DVDs, get your Power Mac G4/733 order in now. That is, unless you doubt Steve's prediction...

About that expected return to profitability... have you given any thought to how Apple intends to make money even as the economy is "melting down" and the personal computer industry as a whole is struggling with depressed growth? There are all sorts of indicators that most of the people who want computers now already own them; if that's true, who's going to buy the Macs that put Apple back in the black? Well, according to Apple, we are. And when we say "we," of course, we mean "you."

Yes, as noted in a Reuters story first pointed out to us by faithful viewer Michael Doughty, Apple hopes to ride out this bout of economic ickiness by trying to "persuade its fans to upgrade faster than planned." As Steve says, "entering 2001, the climate in the market right now is that Apple, and I think a lot of our compatriots in the market, are going to be looking to drive sales to the installed base as well as to expansion." The hope, obviously, is that if you wanted one Mac, maybe you'll want two. Or perhaps you've decided that your Blueberry iMac is so 1999, and you're ready to trade up to an Indigo model instead. Landfill, shmandfill; disposaMacs mean higher sales and higher profits. We wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually starts branding Macs with an honest-to-goodness expiration date.

There's something to this strategy, folks. We took a second to tally the running count, and we came to the conclusion that AtAT's staff has purchased seven Macs in less than seven years. That doesn't include the Power Computing clone we bought when we couldn't find anyone who had Power Mac 7300s in stock, the Macintosh SE we found on a trash pile, or the Mac Classic we were given as payment for hooking up someone's LAN. Of course, of those seven, only four were brand new, current models; two were new but discontinued, and one was used. Still, despite the fact that we're not exactly typical computer buyers, here, our numbers indicate that Apple may well be on to something. Somehow we doubt that there are families out there who buy, say, seven Gateways in as many years. Maybe Mac people do buy computers more often.

What this means, of course, is that owning a primary-use Mac that's more than two years old is, frankly, a crime against the platform. And you say you've only got a desktop system, and no portable to go with it? What kind of Apple supporter are you? That's the Mac user equivalent of kicking a puppy. Shame on you. Now get out there and spend!