Like a dagger in our collective heart! That's what all those tips from faithful viewers felt like yesterday, as they dashed our hopes against the rocks of despair. Yes, friends, while we struggled to keep hope alive, message after message streamed into AtAT headquarters informing us that Pismo, the new PowerBook expected to be unveiled during Uncle Steve's keynote address on Wednesday, will not ship with a light-up keyboard after all. So says a wide range of correspondents, ranging from the everyday shmoe who heard it on the street to the friend of an until-just-recently PowerBook engineer.

Now, if we were going only by the feedback we receive, we could maybe have managed to stay somewhat optimistic on the light-up front; after all, we get some real doozies sent in sometimes. (If Steve really unveils a Pikachu edition iMac, we'll eat every hat in the house.) But our dreams of glowing keyboards died when our original reason for hope jumped ship; updated from the Expo, O'Grady's PowerPage now states that Pismo's "glow-in-the-dark" keyboard "may be a false rumor." Apparently someone at Apple replaced the translucent root-beer-colored keyboard in his PowerBook G3 with a white one taken out of an iBook, and that may have started the whole rumor. Well, that and wishful thinking from fashionable fans of glowing computers the world over.

Worse yet, the PowerPage is now downplaying the likelihood of nearly all of the really new and interesting features originally predicted; the two-button trackpad (which, personally, we wouldn't particularly care to see, but at least it'd be interesting) is now listed as "unlikely," and the super-keen new Harman Kardon sound system now may consist of little more than "better speakers." Wow. If the PowerPage was correct in saying that Pismo looks pretty much just like the current PowerBook, it's sounding less and less exciting. Oh, sure, it'll have substance (faster G3s, FireWire, AirPort, etc.)-- but it's the glitz that grabs the interest of the short attention spans like ours. One way or the other, we'll all know in just a few short hours.

Wow. Regular viewers of AtAT are well aware that we, your friendly producers, keep our money well away from the stock market-- but we do keep an eye on Wall Street, because it's a fun way to see how different companies are doing, relatively speaking. Plus there's always the chance for high drama. So Tuesday night we pulled up a list of tech stocks just to see how the day's trading went. Can we just say this: we haven't seen so much red all at once since Amelio was running Apple. Dell, IBM, Sun, AOL-- everything was down, including our beloved Apple, whose stock dropped nine points in a day. According to a ZDNet Inter@ctive Investor article, the tech-rich NASDAQ had its single worst day in history, losing 230 points before the carnage was over. Medic!

Interestingly enough, AAPL shed those nine points on the very same day that analyst Richard Gardner of Salomon Smith Barney upgraded Apple's stock to "outperform." Gardner expects AAPL to rise shortly due to "positive announcements at the show, a solid earnings report on Jan. 19, and a potential stock split"; his price target is now $115. Meanwhile, a river of blood runs through Wall Street, apparently caused by a combination of profit-taking and concerns over a potential interest rate hike next month...

The points that AAPL lost on Tuesday only just cancelled its gains from Monday, so it's not a disaster or anything. In fact, the phrase "buying opportunity" springs to mind, especially given the fact that Steve Jobs will be delivering his Macworld Expo keynote address on Wednesday morning-- you all know what usually happens to Apple's stock after Steve runs the RDF for an hour or two. We're expecting a rebound, big time.

The year 2000 is already four days old, but Salon Magazine's finally gotten around to issuing its predictions for the year ahead. (Thanks to faithful viewer Jim for giving us the heads-up.) Topping the list of expected changes ahead? "Computer couture." All those pundits who pooh-poohed the iMac's influence on the rest of the industry are still trying to extract their feet from their mouths-- a difficult task, given that most of them still have their heads up their posteriors as well. Did anyone else just go to a scary visual place?

So what's nice about the tongue-in-cheek (we've got body parts galore today!) Salon article is that, while it doesn't explicitly mention Apple or the iMac, the homage is clear: "As we leave the gray depths of the 20th century for the Bondi Blue sky of a radiant future..." Granted, Bondi Blue is so 1998, but it's a nice nod nonetheless. And following the predictions of Dell's Froot Loops computers and eMachines's Starburst line, there's the premonition of IBM releasing ThinkPads in fruit flavors: you can have any color as long as it's Blueberry.

As for the idea that color will no longer be enough of a differentiator for "fashionable" computers, we agree-- but cowhide laptops and bondage BeOS systems aren't going to cut it, either. We figure that Apple will continue to push style that enhances and seamlessly integrates with industrial design, in a quest for the perfect symbiosis of form and function. How long will it be before the rest of the industry is able to copy that? Note to Apple: the first thing to do is ditch the hockey-puck mouse. Fashion doesn't have to hurt...