Much has been made of the recent Computer Retail Week article which showed that Apple's January sales revenue amounted to 11.9% of total retail PC revenue last month. That makes Apple the third largest computer manufacturer based on revenue percentage. That's better than Hewlett Packard and IBM. Not bad for a dying company with only 3% of the market.

Now, before you get all worked up, that 11.9% isn't even close to the front-runner. Compaq has 34.6% of retail PC revenue, which is a serious slice of the pie. Packard Bell came in second with 14.8%. Still, the fact that Apple's 11.9% beats out the revenue of HP and IBM (not to mention Gateway 2000-- who, appropriately enough, is , well, not mentioned) gives us reason to feel confidence in Apple's continued viability as a key player in the personal computer market. With a little luck and a lot of care, perhaps Apple can turn those revenues into a second quarter profit. So far, the analysts seem to think so.

Is it just us, or is there a palpable upswing in the media coverage of Apple lately? It seems we're seeing less of the "it's only a matter of time before they go under" story and more of the "Apple is poised for a comeback" one instead. Just in the last couple of months since Apple posted a small profit, we've seen a lot of positive signs from the company: sales are stronger than we would have expected; the snail ad is still getting airplay (and terrific viewer reaction); their stock (currently hovering over 22) is now higher than it's been since last August's Microsoft-inspired spike; and G3's running VirtualPC and Office 98 are enough of a reason to make many corporations sit up and take notice. Could Apple's karma wheel finally be on an upward cycle?

You've got to admit one thing about Apple: when it comes to publicly addressing leaks and rumors, they are consistent to the point of being obsessive-compulsive. Despite numerous sources reporting this weekend's G3 server introduction and price drops first revealed on MacInTouch a couple of weeks ago, Apple is sticking to their guns and denying that any of it is true. A Newsbytes article tells the details.

Reports of the price reductions and new machines have appeared on virtually every Mac news site now, as well as more platform-agnostic sites like TechWeb and CNET. That didn't stop official Apple spokesperson Russell Brady from spouting the standard party line: "I don't know where they got their information, but Apple has not released any news about price cuts or new products." Meaning, of course, absolutely nothing, unless you adhere to the tenets of a bizarre religious affiliation whose first commandment is "Thou shalt believe no words unless they passeth from six-colored lips."

All we can say is, if those price cuts don't appear this weekend, we'll be mighty confused. And more than a little suspicious. Sure, it's possible that the rumor started from a single misinformed source, and spread like a virus through the Mac media engine, but it seems pretty unlikely. If those prices don't drop and the new systems aren't introduced, we're going to have to assume that someone pulled the plug at the last minute. Guess we'll wait and see...

Looks like we're not the only ones having server problems, lately... All of AOL apparently suffered a two and a half hour outage on Monday night, when electrical problems shut down their central servers in Virginia. Member email was inaccessible for over five hours. You can read more about it in a Wired article.

Strangely, Wired reports that AOL is reluctant to discuss the exact nature of the electrical problems with the press. While they seem to know exactly what happened, AOL spokesperson Wendy Goldberg would only give the vague answer that "it was a component malfunction in the electrical system, and that's all I can give you." The fuzziness of that response implies to us that the real cause was either quite a bit more serious than AOL's letting on, or maybe just a lot more embarrassing. Like a squirrel chewed through a line, or something. Either way, the outage is another potential reason for AOL members to consider switching to different providers.

When all's said and done, though, two and a half hours of downtime in a year or so is a pretty good track record-- we'd love to have downtime that low. Of course, when AtAT goes down, it miffs the 2000-odd soap fans who merely find their viewing schedule thrown into a mild level of disarray; when AOL goes down, they inconvenience their 11,000,000 paying customers, many of whom are presumably relying on AOL's service to get their work done. We suppose there's a slight difference of scale there...