Say, remember about a week ago when we made the stunningly perspicacious observation that the Power Mac G5 introduction may have negatively affected sales of the current G4-based Xserves? Controversial stuff, we know, but at the time we figured we just had to go out on a limb and make the prediction, taking on the endless legions of people who embraced the conventional wisdom and insisted that the coming of the G5 would actually sell lots more G4 Xserves. See, whereas most people figured that G4 Xserve sales would steadily increase as savvy tech purchasers snap them up before the G5 processor makes the Xserve "way too fast" for "too little cost," we made the bold prediction that people would actually postpone Xserve purchases in order to get G5 speed. Seriously, if you think about it for a little while, it actually makes sense.

And not only does it make sense, apparently it was right! InfoWorld quotes an anonymous reseller as saying that "Xserve sales are dead," and that the time of death was "the day Apple came out with the G5." Moreover, the guy claims that Xserves (especially when paired up with the RAID box) were a hot commodity and selling well until Steve trotted out the G5 hype, after which he "couldn't give [them] away to [his] grandmother." Apparently when it comes to servers, Grandma's more of a Linux gal. Or possibly she's taking some kind of mind-altering prescription drug, because no one in her right mind turns down a free Xserve. Hey, Anonymous Reseller Guy: if those big honkin' Xserves are taking up precious space in your warehouse, we'd be more than happy to take 'em off your hands. And we're sorry about your grandmother's apparent inability to grasp the concept of price/performance, as well as her appalling lack of taste.

While it's somewhat off the topic of our own personal superhuman prescience, the article also mentions that rumors sites like MacRumors are predicting G5-based Xserves before the end of the year, and Apple's own discounting practices certainly hint to a release sooner rather than later: Apple developers "can now get 25 percent off the developer price, which is already quite generous." And as we all know, Apple doesn't slash prices down to "almost half off" for anyone unless it's trying to clear out inventory-- or fight a massive drop in demand. You know, kind of like the one we so marvelously predicted. Ooooh. Aaaaah.

Assuming that Apple doesn't get a G5 Xserve out the door until sometime in September, we might find out if all this is really true in about three months' time; the quarterly earnings stats would probably reveal a precipitous drop in Xserve sales for the July/August/September timeframe if one does turn out to exist. Until then, we'll just stick with citing Mr. Anonymous Reseller Guy when we need to demonstrate the breadth and scope of our astounding predictive abilities. Hey, does anyone know how we might go about applying for a government grant?...