So yeah, Apple's about to announce its fifth consecutive quarterly profit, and the iMac is largely responsible. What's not to like? It's small, powerful, friendly, and now it comes in five fruit flavors. We are, however, a little taken aback by Apple's plan to sell iMacs in five colors; rather than take our advice and make the additional colors an Apple Store build-to-order option only, Apple has gone ahead and given five different part numbers to the five different colors and plans to sell them all at retail. This seems to be an astonishing risk from an inventory perspective. Who's to say that one color won't be hugely popular, while another barely sells at all? Apple could end up writing off inventory losses due solely to the public's color preferences.

According to TechWeb, though, the risk isn't all that bad. They spoke to Leatrice Eiseman, the director of the Pantone Color Institute, who claims that Apple's five color choices for the new iMac are all quite safe, in terms of popularity. She claims that "the only risky color is the lime. It's the iffiest. It's been very hot in the middle to latter 1990s, but it's a color that is losing momentum." Hrm, okay. How does that translate into real sales? For the answer, we turned to MacWEEK, who got some initial sales figures from MacMall: in the first two days after the new colors were introduced, MacMall sold "23 Blueberry, 14 Grape, 11 Lime, four Strawberry and two Tangerine iMacs." So Blueberry seems to be the most popular by far, with poor Tangerine bringing up the rear... Imagine warehouses filled to bursting with scads of unsold Tangerine iMacs. Brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, if you're planning on taking advantage of the fire-sale prices on the Bondi Blue models ($999 or so at most stores), you should act fast. This past Sunday, when we were loading groceries into the AtATmobile, we witnessed a happy couple wheeling two iMac-loaded shopping carts across the parking lot from the local Microcenter. "That's a whole lotta iMacs," I commented, as they wheeled past. I counted ten or eleven of the happy blue lumps, both in boxes and sitting loose in the carts, which they then proceeded to load into their minivan. It was an odd sight, but a thrilling one; whether they're opening a cybercafé or just installing an iMac in every room of their house we couldn't say, but they sure looked happy about the whole situation.