Not that it came as any surprise to those of us who watch Apple like a rabid pack of obsessive groupies (or even to those of us who watch Apple in much the same way that we can't help staring at a car wreck), but Apple posted another profit today. And just as they did for Q1, their Q2 numbers exceeded the analysts' consensus; while the average analyst prediction was $21 million, Apple instead revealed a comfortable $55 million profit. As you should expect, the net is ablaze with stories about Apple's continuing profitability-- you can find a ton of them over at MacSurfer's Headline News. We personally recommend that you check out MacCentral's notes from the Apple teleconference, at which they reported the good news, and of course there's always Apple's official press release on the subject. (And, just to keep the universe in some semblance of balance, there's the obligatory "Yeah, they're profitable, but they still suck" article over at CNET.)

For the most part, the details of the results reveal excellent news all around. Unit shipments increased 8% from the same quarter a year ago, and gross margins increased to 25% from 19% in Q2 '97. Yes, revenues are down slightly, but given that Apple nixed many of its peripheral product lines like color printers and digital cameras (and the fact that Macs simply cost less these days), that's neither surprising nor alarming. And compared to the same quarter a year ago (in which Apple lost a massive $708 million), things are positively rosy. The key to the picture is the PowerMac G3, which made up over half of all units sold.

As for the analysts' predictions being off by some $34 million or so, what can we say? AtAT viewers know the real score. A whopping twelve entrants in our "Beat the Analysts" contest accurately predicted the size of Apple's Q2 profit. Major congratulations are in order to eagle-eye Apple-watchers Jon Bodner, Travis Sherer, Steve Palmieri, Joe Shear, Mike Esparza, John Campbell, Gustavo Delfino, Colin Chung, Kristy Fairchok, Judy Habel, Merry Carter, and Mark Tyrrell. For more details on the results (such as who wins what), head over to the contest page.

Wow, we wish Mac the Knife had been incarcerated earlier! It seems that since he got thrown in the slammer, the juicy tidbits just keep on coming. Today he reports that Apple's Newton OS replacement may not be as far off as we've all been thinking. In fact, his sources report that the so-called "Allegro Lite" thin-client version of the Mac OS may actually surface at the Worldwide Developer Conference next month.

While at first that seemed really unlikely to us, the more we thought about it, the more it made sense. Apple's publicly stated that the WWDC is where they will finally reveal the murky details of their operating system strategy. Since Apple has also publicly stated that the death of the Newton does not signal a retreat from the handheld space, it only stands to reason that they'd want to use WWDC to bring developers on to the Newton OS' replacement-- namely, the handheld version of the Mac OS. It's not out of the question.

The incurably optimistic among you will even believe the Knife when he says that Apple will also trot out a lineup of Allegro Lite licensees, including such heavy-hitters as Casio, Sharp, and Panasonic, all bent on using Apple's answer to the terminally-clunky Windows CE. And if you've achieved the sort of optimism only attainable via the use of dangerous narcotics, you may even believe the rumor that Apple will show both the Allegro Lite-powered "eMac" (now claimed to be due in September) and the mysterious Apple Media Player, recently outed by those guys over at Apple Recon. Who knows? Ah, the colors, the colors...

We wanted to spend a little airtime telling you about the neato interview with Gil Amelio over at Mac Home Journal (and now I guess we have-- neat how that works out, hmmmm?), but then we saw that Larry "Blabbermouth" Ellison's been talking to reporters again, and that will always take precedence on our show, no matter how mundane his comments. This time the subject is once again whether best buddy Steve Jobs will bite the bullet and stay on at Apple permanently. A Reuters story immortalizes his comments.

Unfortunately, those comments don't reveal much that we hadn't already seen. Of course Steve's "torn" about taking the job. It's a little stronger to say that he "doesn't really want to stay," but of course wishy-washiness pretty much invalidates that point when Larry adds, "on the other hand, he loves Apple." Great. Thanks for the clarification. At least we get a little bit of the why behind Steve's reluctance to sign on full-time: "He's torn between his love for Pixar and he has a young family." That's clear, and those are both very valid reasons-- of course, we all knew this already.

So basically, what have we learned from these pearls of wisdom? Mostly that Larry can talk up a storm, even when there's not much to say. Still, you just never know when he's suddenly going to start talking about top secret projects like the Mac NC or the AMP, so he's worth keeping an eye on. They can't all be gems, though.