Who could have guessed that our idle musings on the fate of Tangerine would have brought elicited such a firestorm of response? For those of you who are a little behind, we're talking about the relative popularity of the five new fruity iMac colors; since Apple opted to sell all five colors at retail instead of making the special hues a build-to-order-only option at the Apple Store, there's more than a little danger that some colors will be drastically more popular than others, leading to inventory control problems unseen since the days of the Great Performa Debacle. And Apple's not stupid-- they obviously foresaw the potential danger, which is why they're selling each different-colored iMac with its own SKU number, and why they initially required resellers to buy iMacs in packs of forty, with eight of each flavor. When every reseller had an initially equal inventory of all five flavors, it's an easy matter for Apple to track color popularity through the different SKU's. The hope, of course, was that all five flavors would prove about equally popular, but if that turned out not to be the case, Apple could remedy the situation.

It's still too early for us to have seen any official sales numbers, but informal questioning of a few sizeable resellers indicates that all five flavors are selling well-- except for Tangerine, which is reportedly the least-popular hue (despite the fact that it's leading the pack in DailyMac's flavor poll). When he heard that, we voiced our concern about the possibility of Apple having to deal with warehouses full of homeless Tangerine iMacs, and apparently we tugged on a few heartstrings, because literally dozens of faithful viewers wrote in with suggestions on how to find loving homes for the poor little orange guys. By far the most popular plan was for Apple to push them at the University of Texas, Austin and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; both schools have orange and white as official school colors, and the Tangerine iMac might be enormously popular in those environments.

Sadly, though, Tangerine may have had its day: an anonymous Apple employee contacted us to state that Tangerine has been secretly but officially retired. Apple has ceased production of all Tangerine systems, and once those in the channel are gone, there will be no more. Of course, there's no guarantee that this "inside information" from Apple is actually true; it may just be someone trying to boost Tangerine's sales popularity by starting a rumor that it may soon be the hardest-to-find and most collectible color. Who can say? All we know is, anyone who's been meaning to pick up a Tangerine iMac at some point, including all you Longhorns and Volunteers, might be wise to do so sooner rather than later. He who hesitates settles for Grape.