Even if you're new to the Mac community, it's unlikely that you somehow missed all the hoopla a couple of years ago when everybody and their grandmothers were predicting that Apple was on its last legs. One sign of the times was that any news about Apple-- any news at all-- would always be reported in the worst possible light once the media got a hold of it. For instance, at the beginning of the turnaround when Apple posted its first real profitable quarter in a couple of years, we were seeing all this stuff along the lines of "Rotten Apple Shows Meager Profit; Still Unable to Postpone Inevitable Demise." Heck, it was during those times that AtAT was born, as a reaction to all the melodramatic hand-wringing and psychic angst. These days, though, we're feeling like more and more of an anachronism: not only is Apple doing better, but it seems that sometimes the formerly Mac-hostile press is now exaggerating how well Apple's performing.

Take, for example, the recent Computer Retail Week article about Apple's growth in the retail sales channel: the first line begins, "Retail sales of Apple Computer systems increased 176 percent ... in January, according to the latest channel survey by Inselect ASW Marketing Services." To us that implies that the 176% boost was an increase from the previous month, when in fact CRW is talking about sales growth since January of last year. Not that 176% growth in a year is anything to sneeze at-- it's fantastic news that Apple sold nearly three times as many computers in 1/99 than in 1/98. But the wording of the article seems to have confused some people, as we're seeing some sites refer to the article and claim that Apple had almost tripled its sales from December. Some folks seem to have forgotten that the iMac (which is obviously driving these increased sales numbers) actually dropped in relative sales ranking in January, according to PC Data, so a tripling since December wouldn't be possible unless the whole market practically exploded.

Don't get us wrong; we'd much rather have the press on our side than blasting Apple's every move. Heck, we're not even sure if what we see is "spin" or just coincidence. It's just that we're still a little skittish about this whole media attitude turnaround. We're also just a teensy bit worried that following Apple's latest accomplishment-- demonstrable year-over-year growth, just as they said they'd manage-- somehow some catastrophe will bring it all down around their ears. In the meantime, though, we're going to try to enjoy the fact that Apple "posted the largest sales increase on a year-over-year basis" among all computer manufacturers. Can the good news just keep on coming?