Ooooh, can't you just feel the tension mounting? There's just one day to go until Apple Money Dude Fred Anderson steps up to the mic and delivers his eagerly-awaited dramatic reading from Apple's Q2 balance sheet. Will he regale us with an epic tale of Apple's triumphant return from the depths of the hellish Red Ink Sea? Or maybe he's preparing a heart-wrenching tragedy in which Steve struggles against insurmountable odds to post a profit, but falls short-- hamstrung by hubris, perhaps, or some other hamartia. We're on the edge of our collective seat, because until tomorrow afternoon, we just won't know whether we're going to laugh, cry, or cheer.

Fred is always a master of drama, of course, but this quarter in particular has us hyperventilating in anticipation. As of a month ago, Fred still expected to read selected passages from The Book of Small Profits, but some pundits still think he might opt for a last-minute substitution and recite a series of monologues from All Our Ink Is Red, instead. One thing we do know for certain is that the event will once again be an avant-garde exercise in audience participation, in which the acclaimed Mr. Anderson will improvise answers to questions from the telephonically assembled listeners.

The bad news is that this quarterly event remains an invitation-only occasion for bidirectional access, and typically only the A-List analysts score tickets. (We couldn't even find any up for auction on eBay. Now that's scarce!) The good news is that anyone can listen in, albeit purely in an observer capacity; you can still hear and appreciate the art, but without being able to ask Fred questions, you just can't help shape it. But of course it's better than nothing, so either get the phone numbers for listen-only access from Apple's media alert, or warm up your QuickTime-enabled browsers and prepare to load Apple's official webcast page. The performance begins promptly at 5 PM EDT.

By the way, if you're feeling a bit left out because you don't rate a participatory role in Mr. Anderson's quarterly reading, fear not-- AtAT embraces all. You may not be able to ask Fred about what Joyce meant by the ineluctable modality of the visible or whether he wears boxers or briefs, but at least you can enter our quarterly Beat the Analysts contest and see if you've got a better handle on Apple's finances than those snooty Wall Street types. Who knows? If you win, maybe Fred will so admire your analyst-beating predictive prowess that he'll get you on the guest list for next quarter's reading. What's ten seconds to enter a contest if it might mean the chance to rub shoulders with greatness?

Regardless of what you might think the "i" actually stands for, it's pretty obvious what the prefix signifies in Apple's product line: "i" = "consumer." First we got iMovie, a dead-simple but surprisingly powerful consumer-targeted video editing application. Next came iTunes, software that lets consumers "rip, mix, and burn" digital music to their hearts' content. Then there's iDVD-- it's only available on Apple's most expensive top-of-the-line professional Power Mac G4 for now, but it's still obviously meant for consumers-- filthy rich consumers, sure, but consumers nonetheless. (Otherwise there wouldn't be a separate $1000 DVD Studio Pro, would there?)

So just as the iMac and iBook are clearly targeted at "the rest of us," Apple's iApps are meant for consumers, too. But is it time to break with tradition? As faithful viewer Tony McDaid pointed out, Mac OS Rumors is discussing a new Apple iApp: iPhoto. Hey, why not? All of the other iApps deal with new digital media, so it's only natural that Apple should give its customers a simple yet powerful application that can import pictures directly from scanners and digital cameras, allow for simple image enhancement and fun special effects, and maybe even allow customers to order prints from right within the application itself. (Don't tell us you've already forgotten about Apple's recent investment in the Ofoto online photography service, hmmmm?) Heck, in the spirit of Apple's other "not invented here" iApps, why not just buy Kai's Photo Soap, slap on a less baffling interface, build in iDisk integration, and ship that?

But here's the thing: apparently iPhoto is not going to be a consumer application. Instead, iPhoto Studio is billed as "the perfect solution for the high volume requirements of professional photographers." Instead of letting you touch up your scanned snapshots of Junior's school play for your Christmas card newsletter (red-eye is so unattractive in an eight-year-old dressed as a large wedge of cheese), iPhoto Studio "lets you focus on the quality of your images by helping you manage your workflow for greater productivity and profitability. Explore end-to-end workflow solutions build around the latest professional digital cameras." Uh-oh, Toto... iDon't think we're in Kansas anymore.

So while Apple should be (and probably is) working on a photographic complement to iMovie/iTunes/iDVD, apparently iPhoto Studio isn't it. Oh, and for those of you who are more likely to lick six live rats than trust anything that Mac OS Rumors posts, we should probably mention that MOSR's source on this one is pretty darn impeccable: it's Apple's own web site. It seems that Apple's holding a free seminar on "Digital Workflow for Photographers" in one of its own seminar rooms in New York City this Friday. Are there any Big Apple shutterbugs out there who want to spend a few hours on Friday morning finding out just what this iPhoto Studio thing really is? If so, register now... and, barring any NDA you might have to sign, don't forget to fill us in on the dirt afterward.

Addendum: Scratch that. According to the Mac Show, iPhoto Studio is indeed a third party service, not an Apple product. Which, of course, makes us wonder what Apple will name its consumer image-editing application if/when it ever sees the light of day... we vote for "iPix."

Say it ain't so, Steve! That cute translucent space-egg has been your baby for almost three years, now, and while we understand that nothing lasts forever, a demise this early would be a tragedy for the ages. Angels would weep, the sun would refuse to rise, and all the color in the world would fade into beige at the passing of the Little Mac That Could. Make no mistake; Apple's paradigm-shattering consumer desktop saved the company, and we can't bear the thought of losing it. Could it really be true? Could the iMac be dead?

Well, uh, no-- and it's a darn good thing, too, because we're at a loss as to where to buy translucent black armbands. Turns out it's all just a spiffing good case of gallows humor over at The Register, who has posted a photo of a half-covered iMac billboard that now just features a Flower Power unit next to the single word "Rip"-- you know, like "Rest In Peace," or "Rest In Pieces." (If Apple did choose to deep-six the iMac, we bet it'd at least come up with a more tasteful and less expensive way of letting us all know... although we admit that there's something rather appropriate about a three-letter iMac obituary.)

Britain's Labour Party (whose ad obscures half of the iMac banner) obviously isn't courting the Mac fanatic vote, if it's willing to deface an Apple ad in such an unfortunate manner. Still, we can't deny that there's a certain surreal charm to the resulting half-and-half billboard, which now essentially features a Flower Power iMac, a woman, and a child, together with the enigmatic slogan, "Rip. The work goes on." And we suppose it could have been worse; if only the "Burn" portion of Apple's ad had remained visible, we might have thought that the iMac was destined for an eternal afterlife in Silicon Hell. Perish the thought!