Hey, you-- morose person. Why the long face, Horace? Still dwelling on Apple's market share numbers? Now, you know that's not good for you; why are you torturing yourself this way? No matter how many times you picture that neon floating "5%" (or 4%, or 3%, or whatever equally- or more-upsetting figure you happen to believe this week), it's just not going to look any happier, incessant comparisons to BMW's market share notwithstanding. This is a surefire downer of a game you're playing, here.

Or is it? Think Secret has IDC's final numbers for the second calendar quarter, and for once, Apple's market share might conceivably be something to smile about-- provided that you limit your scope appropriately. For example, if you look at Apple's share of worldwide desktop sales last quarter, you'll find yourself staring down a ninth-place finish of 2.3%, which is enough to make any self-respecting Mac user contemplate shuffling off this mortal coil with extreme prejudice-- despite the fact that it represents an increase from 2.0% the quarter before. This is exactly the sort of thing that keeps the Zoloft folks rolling in big piles of hundreds.

But if you instead look only at Apple's portable sales in the same quarter, and furthermore pretend that any country that isn't the U.S. doesn't count (which, if you're an American, is certainly second nature by now), something magical happens: Apple's market share shoots up to a mind-bending 7.0%. What's more, that's up almost two full points from 5.1% in the previous quarter, and represents a unit sales increase of a staggering 48%-- fully six times the average industry U.S. notebook sales growth, and the largest among all manufacturers. Holy cats, it really is Apple's "Year of the Notebook"! And here we always figured that Steve was just riffing when he said that because he'd lost his notes!

Think Secret's sources report that Apple execs are "ecstatic" with these latest numbers (all the numbers, apparently; then again, they're used to looking at teensy percentages all the time, so it's all a matter of perspective) and feel that when the Q3 sales results surface a few months from now, we'll see numbers "just as strong." Personally, we're mildly skeptical; while the advent of the long-awaited Power Mac G5 ought to goose the desktop numbers a smidge, we can't help wondering what'll happen to that unbelievably cool 7% notebook share given how long we all had to wait for new PowerBooks to make the scene.

Still, why dwell on the future? Apple market share obsessives finally have reason to live in the now, and the now is all about 7%, baby! Forget Zoloft; if Apple manages to hit 8% with its portables next quarter, somebody's going to be pumping us full of horse tranquilizers just to keep us from climbing the walls in manic delirium. Mood swings are tiring, aren't they?

So whaddaya think, is the economy finally getting better? The only reason we even consider the remote possibility is because the number of wild-eyed bank officials clinging desperately to our pants legs and begging us to take out a series of low-interest loans has dropped back into the single digits, and for one brief shining moment earlier in the week, the AtAT stock portfolio had actually edged into the black by six whole bucks! Boy howdy, we hadn't seen that much excitement around here since we tried to microwave half a grape!

Well, whenever the economy does really start to recover, certain computer companies will start raking in extra cash as businesses begin investing in high-tech hardware again-- and BusinessWeek reports that S&P Ratings Services expects Apple to be among the very first companies to benefit from increased corporate hardware spending.

Wait, Apple? Yeah, we know, it sounded weird to us, too; despite recent incidents of toe-dipping into the enterprise market, Apple isn't exactly known as the premier computer supplier to Big Business. (Yet.) And yet while Dell is described as "clearly leading the list of early beneficiaries" of increased corporate spending (well, duh), Apple is remarkably listed in second place-- ahead of IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, and SGI.

The reason why Apple is expected to benefit so much earlier than the other heavy hitters is pretty simple, actually. To start with, Macs are big in the content creation market, so it's the platform of choice in the advertising business. A better economy means more new products introduced, and more new products means more advertising to promote said products. That leads to an influx of moolah for the advertising business long before the sale of those new products brings in cash for everyone else-- which means that creative markets ("advertising, graphic, and corporate design") will have dough to blow on new Power Mac G5s pretty much right off the bat. Clever, no?

Also, "small and midsize businesses" are expected to start spending on hardware before the mondo huge companies, and Apple stands to pull in a little extra cash on Xserves and the like. And whereas companies who want to buy Macs buy from Apple, a Wintel is a Wintel is a Wintel, so early earnings by companies like IBM and HP are "limited by highly competitive industry conditions." (In other words, if you want a Wintel, Dell is cheaper.) As for Sun and SGI, their bread and butter is high-end servers, and the economy will have to recover a lot before spending on that sort of stuff really takes off again.

So, yeah-- Apple is well-positioned to benefit quickly from an economic turnaround. Who knew? Now all we need is for our 401(k)s to miraculously triple in size and we'll be back in business. Any day now...

It's Friday again, kids, and you know what that means: it's time once again for AtAT's End-O'-Week Dose-O'-Paranoia! Because honestly, what's a weekend without frequent nervous glances over your shoulder and that little seed of doubt burning a hole through the bottom of your stomach? Heck, without those, you might as well relax until next week or some such crazy thing. What are we, hippies? Exactly. So get ready to sweat!

To start off, we should mention that when we first heard about the imminent report promoted by the Computer and Communications Industry Association a couple of days ago, we didn't mention it because to us it fell squarely into "Dog Bites Man" territory. You probably know about this thing, right? CNET revealed that the anti-Microsoft CCIA was about to publicize a new independent report "asserting that the software giant's dominance in key technologies threatens the national infrastructure." And sure, the whole national security spin on the topic is sorta juicy, we suppose, but when all's said and done, what we're talking about here on a fundamental level is a pack of geeks bellyaching about Microsoft-- which is about as rare as a one-headed, two-winged chicken with feathers. Not much drama to suck out of that sitch, and we know that our viewers, as discriminating drama hounds, demand better.

(Of course, we then regaled you instead with tales of how Motorola was selling something that turned out not to be its PowerPC business to someone that turned out not to be Apple, and it all wound up drier than a cracker-on-toast sandwich with a side of sawdust. What can we say? It's our deep-seated cluelessness about what we're doing two-thirds of the time that makes us so gosh-darned lovable.)

Anyway, the report did surface as expected, and it does indeed assert that Microsoft's "near ubiquity in personal computing" has rendered most computer networks-- including those of the U.S. government-- vulnerable to "massive, cascading failures." Oooh, nice! 9 out of 10 for style, but since we knew all this already, it's maybe a 4 from the East German judge for actual dramatic content, right? Except that the aftermath of the report's release is arguably a whole lot scarier than anything you'll find within its pages.

How's this for drama? Faithful viewer Dana Sutton slid us a Washington Post article revealing that the report's first-listed author, Daniel Geer, has apparently been unceremoniously stripped of his job at computer security firm @stake, Inc. where he had been the Chief Technical Officer. @stake released a statement that Geer is "no longer associated" with the firm and that his coauthorship of the CCIA report "was not sanctioned" by @stake and "the values and opinions of the report are not in line with [the firm's] views." This despite the fact that Geer and the other authors made it clear that "they were speaking for themselves, not the companies or organizations" with which they're affiliated.

Interestingly enough-- and you never would have guessed this in a million billion years-- @stake does a little business with Microsoft; just last June @stake completed a security analysis of .NET versus IBM's competing WebSphere framework-- analysis that was "funded by Microsoft" and which, surprise to end all surprises, concludes that "the .NET framework on Windows Server 2003 better complies with security best practices and requires less effort to secure." Gee, so we've got a Microsoft-funded report that extols the virtues of Microsoft security (which is twelve kinds of suspicious in and of itself), followed by the "sudden departure" of an employee who had spoken out against Microsoft's very lack of security. Suppose there's any connection? (Don't think about it too hard.)

So what we have here, ladles and gentlemints, is a fairly obvious case of someone losing his livelihood for publicly criticizing Microsoft in a non-job context-- and that's what should instill a little extra jolt of paranoia into your days off. Just remember this the next time you say anything doubleplusungood about Big Redmond; they have ways of finding out, and if you're not careful you'll wind up jobless and sitting in Room 101 with a rat caged to your head. Enjoy the weekend!