It's no secret that Apple's been on an inventory-reducing rampage for a while now, and we're starting to think that their behavior is bordering on the obsessive. Ever since Mike Dell publicly stated that if he ran Apple he'd shut it down and give the money back to the stockholders, we've suspected that Dell has been Steve Jobs' white whale. Since Apple can't even hope to compete with Dell's massive revenues and sheer volume of online sales (yet!), it seems that Jobs and company have made it a priority to beat Dell's on-hand inventory levels instead. Dell has traditionally been the best in the business when it comes to keeping inventory down, but last year they got bumped to second place when Apple took the lead. For instance, in the fourth quarter of 1998, Apple showed six days of inventory, beating Dell's eight. Last quarter, it was two days, beating Dell's seven. And according to a MacObserver article, for the second quarter just ended, Apple finished up with a staggering one day of inventory, while Dell still lags at six.

Now if you're wondering how any global computer company that sells millions of computers each year and brings in billions of dollars in revenue can finish a quarter with only one day's worth of on-hand inventory, you're not alone. Analysts asked Apple CFO Fred Anderson that very question during yesterday's press conference, but Fred pretty much kept mum, saying that Apple's "been trying to organize manufacturing facilities to be next to supplier facilities" but going no further, for fear of revealing "competitive trade secrets." That's good enough for the investors, who are just happy that Apple was able to pull it off-- according to Apple Insider, one guy even asked whether Apple's future on-hand inventory levels would be measured in "hours, minutes, or seconds."

So just what are these "trade secrets" that allow Apple to keep such lean inventory levels? We don't know, but we have our suspicions. For instance, we know that Apple's been in secret high-level talks with the Zeta Reticulans for a good long while now, set up by iMac designer Jonathan Ive. (You didn't seriously think he was from this planet, did you?) Seems the Reticulans were interested in studying Jobs' Reality Distortion Field for their own world-dominating needs, and were willing to trade a Faster-Than-Light assembly drive for the privilege. In fact, Apple's on-hand inventory is only as large as it is because suppliers can't get the raw goods to the plants fast enough-- but once the Reticulan teleport bays are up and running, Apple's internal inventory levels won't be measured in units any larger than nanoseconds. (We suppose the other possibility is superb organization, excruciating attention to detail, and lots of good old-fashioned elbow grease-- but we doubt it.)