You've all been there, so you know: one up side to slipping and falling off the face of the earth for a couple of months is that, when you finally manage to reverse your vector of travel in the vacuum of space by shedding enough skin cells in the appropriate direction (in accordance with Newton's Third Law of Motion), and then you recover from that pesky windburn you experience upon atmospheric reentry, and then you finally fire up a browser and visit some Mac-centric web sites for the first time in eightish weeks, you get to experience a few surprises. Surprise number one for us: holy yikes, Apple's fourth quarter results are going to be announced later today.

Needless to say, due to gravitational mishaps leading to a rather drastic shortage of countdown time, we'll be skipping our traditional Beat The Analysts contest again this quarter. (We'll probably just pick some random shmoe who writes to us and toss him or her a prize pack, maybe with some AtAT shirts and a couple of chunks of space debris that were surgically removed from various spaceborne extremities.) But that doesn't mean we can't get excited about this whole quarterly results thing, because at the end of the day it's not about free promotional apparel (much), but rather about Apple kicking serious financial tail and making the naysayers chew their own faces off in sheer jealous rage.

Sorry, was that an inappropriately violent mental image? Forgive us. We've been floating in space. Holding your breath that long does things to you.

Anyway, so what can we expect when the numbers surface shortly before the webcast begins? Well, we're scoping out the analyst estimates now, and if those guys know their stuff (simmer down-- we said "if"), Apple ought to be announcing quarterly earnings of something like 37 cents per share. Given that the company has almost 830 million shares of AAPL floating around out there, we're looking at a quarterly profit somewhere in the neighborhood of $307 million. Which means that, as far as neighborhoods go, we're talking big mansions, exquisitely sculpted topiary of figures from Greek mythology, and a well-paid security force, a pack of vicious dogs, and a big, black, spiky fence with 40,000 volts running through it keeping both the country club and the gene pool nice and bland. In short, money. Lots of it.

Now sure, Apple earned 37 cents per share last quarter, so if they do it again it's not exactly breaking new ground. But let's not forget that Apple has a history of beating those analyst estimates with a stick until they bleed. It doesn't happen every quarter, but it happens often enough that Apple may well do it again. And since last quarter's results represented the highest earnings and revenue in the company's entire history, that means we might be looking at a second record-breaking quarter in a row. No wonder AAPL's the only stock in our portfolio that's actually trading higher today.

So stay tuned-- if not to us (totally understandable, given our startling lack of reliability lately; in fact, why are you even here now?), than to something somewhere that'll dish you the goods when they become available. If Apple breaks a third of a billion dollars in actual recurring profit, drinks are on us. At least, until we wash them off and pour ourselves some new ones.

Surprise number two following our return to the earth's surface: sweet bees 'n' crackers, Apple's got one o' them thar media events slated for tomorrow. You know these things: Apple invites members of the press to some big, dark room and promises them a story so big it'll make the moon landing look like the three-day Sheboygan Clothespin Shortage of 1918. Not that we mean to make light of any of those poor Sheboygan residents who wore damp socks for half a week until FEMA finally showed up; we feel your pain, people. Or at least your sogginess. (And we're not blaming FEMA for a slow response, there, either, since we think they showed up pretty darn quick considering they didn't actually exist for another sixty years or so.)

We missed out on most of the pre-event wild-ass speculation, obviously, but as usual these days, most of it centered on the iPod. It seems that most of the more interesting stuff came out of AppleInsider, who last week predicted the advent of-- what else?-- a video-capable iPod. We're pleased to announce that, according to official tallies, the videoPod has now officially surpassed the Apple-branded PDA as the most-rumored future Apple product that company executives have repeatedly denied the existence of in public. (Doesn't mean it won't happen, though.) Meanwhile, only yesterday AI was talking about the possibility of a Madonna Special Edition iPod nano that will be, um, pink (good news for all who mourned the demise of the Hello Kitty-hued miniPod) and will allegedly come "preloaded with her entire music catalog." Sales will presumably depend heavily on whether or not said catalog can be deleted.

Think Secret, however, covers the more mundane (and, if history is any indication, probably more accurate) end of the spectrum. According to a report last Sunday, fifth-generation iPods will still be video-challenged, which comes as disappointing news to everyone who was looking forward to hacking a way to watch bootlegged episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter on a two-inch screen. (That includes us, by the way.) They will, however, boast "slightly smaller enclosures" available in both classic white (the new black) and nano black (the new white). They may also jump to 40 GB and 80 GB capacities while retaining their current $299 and $399 price points.

Whoa, there, Tex-- try to control your enthusiasm.

Assuming for a moment that video is still not in the cards, if these new 'Pods have any features more groundbreaking than minimally shrimpier form factors, the inevitable bigger disks, and an inverse color choice, we suppose we'll have to wait 'til tomorrow to find out just what those may be. Personally, we're still holding out hope that 5th-gen models will finally include an FM tuner-- not because we actually want to listen to the radio (eeeeeyyyeeeeewwwwww!!!), but because we suspect that if we take an FM-capable iPod and plug it into an iTrip or similar FM transmitter, we could simultaneously broadcast and receive on the same frequency, thus triggering a feedback loop that would let us travel through time. We swear the numbers work on paper.

iPods aren't the only thing on the agenda for tomorrow's big dog and pony show, however. According to Think Secret, there will also be "at least four new Mac configurations" sharing the stage. (And also, we assume, dogs. And ponies.) Details are woefully absent, but the site had previously specified that the new models would be Power Macs and PowerBooks, which makes a fair amount of sense from a product refresh timing cycle. So if you've been waiting for a new pro Mac, start loosening the money belt, Big Spender.

What's that? You say you're waiting for Intel-based pro Macs, which are slated to debut next year? Yeah, so were we. At least, we were until we realized a few important consequences that waiting for the jump to Intel would bring.

For one thing, when they finally ship, Intel-based Macs will run most PowerPC code via Rosetta-- but at a speed hit compared to native x86 code. Considering that we recently spent over a thousand dollars on major upgrades to most of our professional software applications, all of which is (obviously) PowerPC-native, and considering that we generally only pay for major upgrades every few years (we aren't exactly rolling in dough over here, ya know), it probably makes good fiscal sense for us to stick with PowerPC Macs through one more hardware upgrade cycle. And let's not forget that Rosetta apparently won't handle Altivec code (or has that changed? We've been out of the loop, remember), so lots of the software we just paid to upgrade would have to be upgraded again, not just to run at full speed, but to run at all.

For another thing, Intel-based Macs won't run Classic anymore. Believe it or not, yes, we still rely on Classic for a few applications that it would cost us an arm and a leg to replace with Mac OS X-native equivalents. We know we'll have to make the jump eventually, but again, conspicuous lack of dough-rolling behavior over here. And you know we aren't exactly the sort of folks who have all kinds of time to implement new solutions and fix what isn't (entirely) broken. (Jeez, just look at what's in your browser window, fer cryin' out Pete's sake. We're still partying like it's 1999.)

And last, our current Power Mac is hurting pretty badly. There are fan issues, and power supply issues, and while that's all fixable, we're finally at the point where a dual 800 MHz G4 isn't quite cutting it performance-wise anymore, so sinking time and money into keeping this ailing beast alive is probably a lousy investment. So if Apple does in fact unveil shiny new Power Macs tomorrow-- potentially the last PowerPC-based Power Macs ever to be produced-- we may well try to scrape together some cash and buy one. We know, it sounds counterintuitive to us, too, but somehow buying "dying" technology actually seems like a good investment in this case.

Besides, we've never been all that thrilled about shelling out cash for version 1.0 of any major new product, especially if it's something we rely on to pay the bills. We'll let the rest of you beta test it first. You're welcome.