There is nothing new under the sun. Apple's bled almost $2 billion in red ink over the past couple of years, according to a Reuters story, and that trend will continue next the time the company reports its quarterly results. What's particularly galling, however, is that the loss may again be tied to inventory write-offs, just as in the past. (As every Apple-watcher knows, Apple has never been able to forecast its way out of a wet paper bag-- even when that bag is left untied and has had the bottom cut out.)

This quarter, it's the 8600's that are sitting in warehouses collecting dust. Sales of the Powermac G3's have been "brisk," but it seems that nobody wants the older 8600. Not a big surprise, actually, since the G3's have a newer, faster processor. But the 8600 is still a solid performer, and if Apple had only cut its price or increased its rebate, we'd probably see them moving pretty well. With luck, Apple will clue in and slash prices to provide and incentive for people to adopt these poor homeless workstations.

On the plus side, the build-to-order scheme recently launched with the unveiling of the Apple Store six weeks ago should help alleviate the "sales prediction myopia" problem in the future. With build-to-order, Apple doesn't have to guess what kind of machines people are going to want to buy-- they can build them as people ask for them. Here's hoping it works.

And by the way-- the Apple quarterly financial results are due to be posted on January 14th. So start exercising those prediction muscles in preparation for the second quarterly AtAT "Beat the Analysts" contest! Register the closest guess to Apple's actual reported quarterly results and win some old and/or silly software from our Baffling Vault of Antiquity!™" We'll post details once the analysts' predictions are unveiled.