Man, if it's not one thing, it's another. (Oooh, that's deep.) You will recall, of course, that whole dust-up with iMac availability last quarter, when demand was through the roof, pre-orders were stacked up like pink slips at Motorola, and LCD iMacs were harder to come by than a cufflink at a nudist colony. As the months marched on, Apple managed to increase production through the judicious application of illicit stimulants and threats of torture on the factory floor, but the company still closed out the quarter with a significant number of backorders to fill. It was a pretty familiar tune to Apple: plenty of demand, not enough supply.

So what's the problem now? Well, the good news is that Apple has gotten all the iMac production issues ironed out and units are rolling off the lines and onto shelves smooth as butter. The bad news is that no one's actually looking to buy them anymore-- or, at least, that's what some Wall Street analysts are saying. According to a CNET article, now that supply is strong, demand is petering out; analysts from both Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney are less than beamingly optimistic about the number of iMacs Apple will be able to sell this quarter, and estimate that the company won't actually move many more than it did during last quarter's Great iMac Drought-- despite the estimated one to 1.3 months' worth of product in the channel.

Now, assuming that this massive deflation of demand is real and not just the tortured imaginings of a couple of Wall Street analysts driven to distraction by playing too much Windows Solitaire, what caused it? Was it the $100 price hike that Apple slapped on when RAM and LCD component prices started to rise? Was it the ever-growing need for instant gratification, which led potential iMac buyers to go out and grab a Compaq instead when they saw the waiting lists last quarter? Or maybe it was just the infinitesimal and constantly shrinking attention span of the American public, who saw the iMac in Time Magazine in January, lusted after it, and then promptly forgot all about it by the time the systems were actually available for purchase. Timing is everything, after all.

Whatever. We won't know for sure whether iMac demand is tapering off or not until next month's quarterly earnings report, but since there's still three weeks left in this fiscal quarter, consider this a friendly reminder: remember that keen new iMac with the positionable LCD display, the zippy G4 processor, and enough Wow Factor to make your neighbors trip over their tongues in jealousy? Remember how you really, really wanted one? Well, you can actually buy them now-- in multiple configurations, even. So giddyup.

Whoa, where's the fire? During our hiatus last month, it came to light time and time again that various Apple executives were filing to sell significant amounts of AAPL stock over a relatively short period of time. According to Reuters, when all was said and done, executive veep Tim Cook, senior veeps Nancy Heinen and Sina Tamaddon, and CFO Fred Anderson had all filed with the SEC to sell off about a million shares of their company stock to the tune of about $25 million, leading to mass speculation that the four of them were raising the funds necessary to go in on a couple of Victoria's Secret "Heavenly Star" diamond-encrusted bras. And get this: the executive sell-off ain't over yet, because MacMinute reports that Avie Tevanian has just filed to dump 87,920 shares himself. The $2.1 million that'll raise is plenty enough for a couple of pairs of the matching $750,000 panties, with change left over.

But is that really what's going on? Now, some of you are maybe going to think that we here at AtAT are getting a wee bit paranoid these days just because we haven't slept since April. But we can assure you that when, for instance, we see giant bugs crawling all over the walls out of the corners of our sleep-deprived eyes, it's not a fatigue-induced hallucination, but a simple consequence of our shockingly abysmal housekeeping abilities and our unfortunate decision to use maple syrup as wallpaper paste when we redecorated a few months back. In other words, lack of sleep notwithstanding, we're sharp as tacks and our judgment remains crystal clear and unclouded. That said, we hereby present our studied and lucid analysis of the recent massive increase in stock-selling activity by Apple executives.

Here it is: they know something you don't. Namely, that Apple is spiralling madly out of control and once the word gets out, the company's going to crater so hard we're going to enter another Ice Age. Right now there's a massive coverup to keep things looking rosy from the outside, but behind the scenes, Apple has only four software developers left, and three of them are working on adding new clip art to AppleWorks. Jonathan Ive suffered massive head trauma in a bizarre gardening accident and has been proclaiming that the future of Apple hardware lies in "beige plastic and right angles." Each of the company's so-called "profits" of the past four years are the product of bookkeeping so dicey it would make Enron's accountants chew their own limbs off in abject horror. And to top it all off, Steve Jobs has become dangerously unhinged and occasionally thinks that he's an evil coatrack from a parallel dimension populated by murderous items of quality furniture. That's just not going to look good to Wall Street during next month's Stevenote.

If you have any AAPL in your portfolio, take our advice-- make like those Apple execs and sell it before it's too late. Sell, do you hear us? SELL!!! Actually, you're probably the type who likes to hear who your sources are before following any investment advice, so we'll tell you: we don't have any hard evidence of the above allegations, but they all came straight from the mouth of the giant pink salamander with the thick Jamaican accent sitting in the lawn chair on top of our fridge. A well-established link between sleep deprivation and psychosis? Hogwash! So, what-- you'd rather believe that all those Apple execs are selling their stock just to cover a tax bill or raise a little cash to buy a yacht or some obscenely bejeweled undergarments? Hey, believe what you want, Captain Gullible; it's your funeral. Now excuse us-- the salamander is demanding more onion rings.

You know, this is old news, but we haven't had a chance to mention it before, and we're sorry, but we can't remain silent about it any longer. It's simply not in our natures to sit idly by and watch evil take root, unless of course there's something good on TV. Plus it's a pretty slow day, drama-wise, and unless Steve Jobs goes on a head-thwacking rampage against the citizens of downtown Cupertino with a sock full of steaming hot Malt-O-Meal in the next couple of hours, well, we think this is worth discussing. Good stuff, Maynard.

So here's the dilly-o: if you're even an occasional viewer of this little show, here, you're probably pretty well aware of the official AtAT stance on Steven, that insipid yutz with the eyebrows and the cheese-eating smirk who's always polluting our televisual experience to hawk cheap Wintel crap by repeating the immortal phrase "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell" ad infinitum. If you're not familiar with our policy towards Steven-Dude, we're not going to detail the whole spiel for you right now because, well, something good's on TV. But suffice it to say that heavy blunt instruments and red-hot pokers figure prominently in any scenario that involves us and him together in a locked sound-proof room.

However, as it turns out, some people actually like Steven-Dude. Lots of people, actually. The whole Dude campaign has been a smashing success for Dell and is responsible for persuading countless hordes of what we can only assume are inbred mouth-breathing troglodytes to incur still more credit card debt in exchange for the privilege of owning a product whose spokesperson makes both Beavis and Butt-Head look like combination brain surgeons, rocket scientists, and poet laureates-- thus proving once and for all that we've reached the ultimate nadir of human cultural development. Or so we naïvely thought.

No, folks, we were wrong, wrong, wrong; the real indication that Western civilization is scraping rock-bottom is that Steven-Dude is so frickin' popular, Dell is now selling "Dude Gear." That's right; as faithful viewer Barry Hamill pointed out several weeks back, now even troglodytes who can't afford an actual Dell computer can shell out their cash on consumer crap emblazoned with the Credo of Our Generation, "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell." T-shirts, CD cases, backpacks, ball caps-- Dell's got all sorts of ways for you to get in touch with your Inner Dude. If this isn't one of the biblical signs of the apocalypse, it darn well should be.

Now, far be it from us to advocate even the mildest form of violence against any living creature, but we will say this: if Uncle Steve does do the sock-full-of-hot-cereal rampage any time soon, here's hoping he has the taste to target any "Dude Gear"-totin' geniuses first. Maybe the wet slap of grain upside the head would knock a little sense into them and they'd opt for something a little more stylish-- like MacSurfShop's own take on the "Dude" shirt, or, dare we say it, the pinnacle of style itself: the AtAT t-shirt?...