Red (or black) alert! There's less than a week left before Apple announces its end-of-quarter earnings, and this one's a real cliffhanger. Provided that you're a reasonably sentient being, you probably recall that Apple's Q1 results were brutally unpleasant: take a few missteps like the overpriced Cube, a botched education initiative, and a lack of CD-RW drives; mix 'em together in this tattered thing we still laughingly refer to as an economy; and out comes a quarter-billion-dollar operating loss. (Garnish with now-worthless stock options and serve cold.)

But, as usual, the real drama's just beginning-- because the reason why Apple posted such a monstrous loss last quarter was to take all its lumps at once and clear the books to start over again. Everything we've heard from Apple since even before last quarter's results were posted was that the company expected to "return to sustained profitability" in Q2. The window of time in which Apple could have issued an earnings warning has long past, which means that the company apparently isn't too far off on its prediction for "a small profit." So the question of the week is this: when Money Dude Fred Anderson goes to record Apple's final Q2 results, will he reach for the red pen, or the black one?

Most analysts seem to be betting on black; the consensus estimate is that Apple will post a profit of two cents per share. But at least one pessimist has an eight-cent-per-share loss dragging down the average, and Macworld reports that a Wit Soundview analyst named Mark Specker is seeing red after having "slashed his estimates" for Apple based on what he sees as "continued weakness in consumer demand for PCs during March." (Then again, the Macworld article also repeatedly refers to Apple's third financial quarter instead of its second; take that how you will.)

What this means is that, more than in any quarter in years, the pendulum can swing either way. While Wall Street is usually more concerned with whether or not Apple beats expectations, a profit of any size would be a tremendous psychological win, especially in this nasty financial climate, so keep your fingers crossed. (By the way, those of you that are itching to register your guesses in our quarterly Beat The Analysts contest should hang in there; our ongoing connection downtime has put the event on hold, but rest assured that it'll be up and running shortly after we're back on the air in our full capacity-- assuming, of course, that we're restored to full service sometime before the results get posted.)