Hey, everybody! Faithful viewer Mike Scherer informed us that Apple just made its annual 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and as usual, it's just chock full to the gills with fascinating financial information that you need to hear about right now! It's going to be full of excitement and adventure and really wild stuff! But first, the intro: ready? "The preparation of financial statements and related disclosures in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and the Company's discussion and analysis of its financial condition and results of operations requires the Company's management to make judgments, assumptions and estimates that affect the amounts reported in its consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes."

...Hello? Hey, wake up!

Okay, so the intro's pretty dry. Let's dive right into the good stuff, shall we? "In January 2003, the FASB issued Interpretation No. 46 (FIN 46), Consolidation of Variable Interest Entities. FIN 46 clarifies the application of Accounting Research Bulletin No. 51 and applied immediately to any variable interest entities created after January 31, 2003 and to variable interest entities in which an interest is obtained after that date. For variable interest entities created or acquired prior to February 1, 2003, the provisions of FIN 46 must be applied for the first interim or annual period beginning afterzzzzzzzzzzzzz..."

[Viewing audience pokes the AtAT staff with, well, an AtAT staff]

...zzzzzzzzzzzzDON'T WAKE THE TADPOLES! Who? What? Whuh?

Oh. Right. You know what? Maybe we'd better skip the analysis of the 10-K, because it's clearly a little too much excitement to bear. Even if you're the hardy type, we recommend checking out MacMinute's summary of the good bits, which is buffered against all that FinancioSpeak that gets the heart pounding so. That way you can just duck in and see that Apple's net sales were up by 8% since last year (and you didn't even know they made nets!) while Mac sales were down 3% in the same time period. PowerBook sales are up, desktop sales were down, iPods went through the roof, retail is booming, and Colonel Mustard did it in the Library with the candlestick. There. We're done.

Now, on to far more important matters: as faithful viewer Mikey pointed out in this MacSlash thread, what's all this about Dell selling eMacs to the New York City Department of Education? If you load up that organization's catalog page and search for "emac," you wind up with a list of eMacs with a vendor code of "DEL043." Click on DEL043 and you find that the vendor is "APPLE C/O DELL MARKETING." A scarier thing has never darkened this plane of existence.

Word has it that "Dell is the only vendor allowed to sell computers to NYC schools" (presumably they won the bid on an exclusive contract), so even Macs have to be purchased through Dell, which effectively makes Dell an Apple reseller. This brings up two important points. First of all, after finding this out, we need about six showers to scrub the dirty off our skin. Secondly, here's a vital question, especially if New York isn't the only place with a setup like this: if a New York school buys an eMac and the sale goes through Dell, who gets credited with the sale as far as the market share numbers go? Because if it's Dell (and we assume it would be), then Dell would be gaining market share on paper for computers that are actually Macs going into the schools. Sneaky. Maybe Apple should start selling cheap-ass Wintels to schools just for the bragging rights.

Okay, so as far as excitement goes, it was no 10-K form, but it still creeps us out. Pardon us while we go exfoliate...