Well, of course you've all heard by now that Apple did it again: according to the company's press release, it posted a $430 million profit last quarter on revenue of $3.68 billion, beating analysts' estimates and boosting year-end earnings and revenues to $1.335 billion and $13.93 billion respectively. That's a 384 percent profit increase over 2004, and also makes fiscal 2005 the company's best year ever-- financially speaking, anyway. Overall it can't compare to 2002, when Steve Jobs once won five games of Klondike in a row and also found a whole box of raisins-- sealed-- just sitting in the parking lot of the Circle K, but from a monetary standpoint, 2005 definitely finishes ahead.

As usual, the good news came fast and furious: Mac sales grew year-over-year by a whopping 48 percent, iPod sales were up a bordering-on-obscene 220 percent over the same time period, Apple's cash stockpile keeps growing and is apparently now up to over $8 billion, the company had its best sales in the education market in ten years, its retail effort is doing so well it's planning to open another 35 to 40 new stores in 2006, etc. etc. etc.-- and yet, within 30 minutes of Apple posting its Q4 results, its stock had plunged 10 percent in after-hours trading. What gives? Er, other than the fact that Apple's stock price always dips after the company announces better-than-expected financial results?

Well, as it turns out, apparently Wall Street was disappointed by iPod sales. It seems that a 220 percent year-over-year growth rate just wasn't good enough; as BusinessWeek described the situation, "iPod sales were merely torrid-- while analysts were looking for nothing less than molten." Apple's earnings call clarifications calmed the panicked sell-off a little; as MacNN reports, Apple still has 75 percent market share among MP3 players, despite having tapered off iPod mini shipments prior to the intro of the iPod nano. That artificially lowered overall iPod sales, as did the fact that Apple was unable to meet the "staggering" demand for the nano. That means there's already a backlog of deferred sales queued up for Q1/06, which mollified Wall Street somewhat and AAPL closed at 49.25, down only 4.75 percent and basically where it was just a little over a month ago. Heck, it's only $1.12 lower than it was just two days ago. So not much ground was lost after all.

Still, though, we don't mind admitting that when we saw AAPL shed five or six clams within half an hour of Apple's earnings announcement, we got a little worried. Like, "change of pants" worried. It all just underscores how fragile Apple's current love affair with Wall Street really is; all of the gains in recent years were based, more or less irrationally, on iPod sales. Despite record revenues and profits, one quarter of slower-than-expected iPod growth-- growth, mind you, but growth that's not as fast as analysts want-- is enough to send shares into free-fall. We fear for our retirement fund. Maybe we should sell some of our AAPL and put the money into something a little more stable. Besides, we always thought a few Krugerrands might class up the joint a little...

Holy wintergreen tartar-control gel on a cracker, they actually did it: as Apple describes in an official press release, Uncle Steve did indeed take the wraps off of the fifth-generation iPod at today's special media event-- and it does video. No, wait, that's ridiculous; Steve said on numerous occasions that video on an iPod would be silly. We must be dreaming. Somebody pinch us.

Nope, didn't feel a thing. We are dreaming!

What's that? You say you're not actually here with us to pinch us physically, and as of yet no one's invented a way to pinch people over TCP/IP? Oh. Well, then, yeah, there was no sign of the rumored Madonna iPod, but the new non-celebrity models do in fact come in both white and black enclosures, they're indeed slightly thinner than their predecessors, they do come with larger hard disks (at least at the $299 price point-- now it's a 30 GB model instead of a 20), and-- here's the kicker-- they do, miraculously enough, show actual video content, just like the kind that Steve Jobs said people would never want to watch on an iPod screen. Of course, that was when iPod screens were a piddly inch-and-a-half diagonally; the new iPods pack a 2.5-inch widescreen (well, as wide as a 2.5-inch screen is likely to get, anyway) display that looks more than adequate for showing off little iMovies of the kids shaving the dog.

Or even watching actual movies and TV shows. True, you're not going to want to watch the letterboxed version of Lawrence of Arabia on one of these things, but catching up on a sitcom or two while riding the train to work ought to be just fine. Indeed, Apple is so sure that people are going to want to watch prerecorded television on these things that it's just released iTunes 6, which extends the iTunes Music Store's pay-per-song model to pay-per-show. Now you can shell out $1.99 per episode of selected shows (mostly just Lost and Desperate Housewives for now) or per music video to tote along with you.

Personally, we're a little skeptical about this whole "pay $1.99 for a TV show episode" thingy; 99 cents is pushing it for a song price, but at least with a song you buy you're probably going to want to listen to it more than once or twice. Not so with a sitcom episode. But even if no one wants to buy show episodes a la carte, that doesn't mean the video iPod won't sell like hotcakes; we figure the first quick-and-dirty freeware apps to convert illegally downloaded TV shows and movies into an iPod-friendly format will surface within days. And Apple's probably counting on that.

Anyway, we want one. We predict Apple will sell a kajillion of them. And we predict that whoever invents and patents NetPinch™ will one day be rolling around naked on a big pile of cash.

Oh, and what's with the total dearth of new Power Macs and PowerBooks today? Looks like the rumor mill has been running a little creaky lately; instead of new pro Macs, Steve trotted out a brand new iMac G5-- or, rather, the same old iMac G5 with a few new tricks up its sleeve. Looks like we'll have to wait a while before we have a new machine we can buy to replace our aging and ailing old dual 800 MHz G4.

Or will we? We're looking over the pricing and specs of this new iMac in the official press release, and we have to say, it's awfully tempting to get the high-end model to serve as our new workhorse so we can put the dual G4 out to pasture. Seriously, look what you get: a 2.1 GHz G5 (which is a single processor, sure, but it ought to feel nice and zippy compared to two 800 MHz G4s), 512 MB of RAM expandable to 2.5 GB, a 250 GB hard drive, an 8x SuperDrive, a RADEON X600 XT graphics subsystem, an integrated 20-inch 1680x1050 display (physically smaller than our original 22-inch Cinema Display, but with more screen real estate), a built-in iSight camera, built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth, and a free Mighty Mouse. All for a piddling $1,699. In contrast, the cheapest current Power Mac is $1,999, and we'd either have to get a new display or buy an adapter to keep using our old one.

The more we think about it, the more convinced we are that we could get some serious work done on a new iMac. About all we'd miss would be FireWire 800 (and we don't have any FireWire 800 devices yet anyway), the second processor (which, granted, we'll miss), the faster frontside bus, and the 16x SuperDrive. For the money we'd save, we figure we can live with those minor shortcomings. An iMac G5 might be the perfect lower-cost system to tide us over while Apple going mucking around in its product line-up to rip out the PowerPCs and start stuffing in Intel chips; by the time we outgrow it, we'll be ready to take the plunge with a second- or third-generation MacIntel.

And when we're not working (let's be honest-- when do we ever?), we figure we can screw around with Front Row, Photo Booth, and the new remote control. They sound pretty cheesy from their descriptions, and we've never really understood the whole "PC in the living room" paradigm that Microsoft's been pushing with its whole "Media PC" thing, but Apple tends to do this sort of thing right, and it ought to at least be nice for dorm room situations and the like. So we'll check one out in person at one of our local Apple retail stores, kick the tires a little, and see if we want to spend money we don't have on an iMac instead of waiting to spend even more money we don't have on a new Power Mac, whenever the heck one of those is ever going to show up.