People are accusing us of being way too giddy about Apple's $40 million quarterly profit, particularly in light of the company's increasingly-declining revenue. What can we say? Everyone makes mistakes-- that's why pencils have Delete keys-- but we're mondo impressed by how quickly Apple seems to be cleaning up its messes. The Cube was a slow seller, but the PowerBook G4 is now burning up the charts. Apple stumbled in education, but then hired back Cheryl Vedoe and bought PowerSchool. Inventory had climbed to eleven weeks, but now it's back down to four-- well ahead of schedule. And even gross margins are only a hair beneath Apple's preferred 27% watermark-- also ahead of schedule. Top that off with a comfy four billion in the bank to ride out this nasty economy (you did hear how Gateway's quarter turned out, right?) and we think we've got every reason to be grinning.

But the real reason we're happy is not because of last quarter, nice though it turned out to be, but because the future has us all abuzz. We've got Mac OS X primed to hit the mainstream this summer-- probably on hot new iHardware that hopefully will duplicate Apple's success with the PowerBook G4. If Apple handles that rollout well, mind share will explode. Just think about what kind of ad blitz we're probably in for. And then there's Apple's worst kept secret: those retail stores we've been hearing about for years, now. Look, one third of Apple's sales last quarter were through the online Apple Store, right? Well, how many first-time buyers are ordering their computers over the 'net? Right. So retail is where it's at when it comes to broadening Apple's user base. Unfortunately, for the most part, the Mac-shopping retail experience is about as satisfying as chewing gravel.

Which means that once Apple gets its own stores out there and can control a nice chunk of its products' retail presentation, that's when we're expecting to be welcoming lots more people into the Mac fold. Take a gorgeous retail store in a high-traffic shopping area, deck it out as only Apple knows how, stuff it full of gorgeous new gear running Mac OS X, iMovie, iTunes, and all that other fabulous stuff, staff the place with honest-to-goodness Mac fanatics who know their products, and whammo-- you've got a recipe for explosive revenue growth. Or a really expensive dismal failure. Either way, you can bet it's going to be dramatic as all get out, so for us it's a win-win situation.

So bring on those retail stores! Think Secret claims that one of them is headed for Savannah, Georgia, provided that Apple winds up getting approval from the city's various zoning boards and whatnot, so there's yet another happy crowd of Macophiles who may one day be able to shop for Apple goods in style (and without being herded towards a beige box because "Macs can't access the Internet"). And if the whole plan falls apart, well, again-- that's why keyboards have erasers.