This is it! Super Tuesday, the Return of the Steve, clobberin' time. In mere hours, Fearless Leader will walk out on stage at Moscone and take a moment to bask in the hysterical applause of his faithful legions before proceeding to wow us all with... well, we don't know for sure, because if we did, we probably wouldn't be wowed. But the rumor mill has been spinning like a top for the past couple of weeks, and all but the most oblivious Mac users know enough to expect some sort of new Power Macs, a brand spankin' new PowerBook, and (with a little luck) a handful of genuine surprises in classic Steve form.

Sadly, the AtAT staff didn't make it to Moscone early enough to secure a seat for the keynote address-- mostly because 1) we were up late, 2) we don't actually have tickets to the Expo, and 3) we're three thousand miles away and watching lots of white fluffy stuff fall from the sky. You can understand how a combination of these factors made it a little tough for us to beat the crowd and stake out a spot in line. And so, instead of sitting in the audience and absorbing all of that industrial-strength Reality Distortion Field energy live and unfiltered, we're going to be tuning in the old-fashioned way: via the sure-to-be-hideously-oversubscribed QuickTime webcast.

As those of you who frequently observe QuickTimed Stevenotes are painfully aware, performance is a hit and miss proposition-- as in, usually we start hitting our heads on the desk in frustration, and missing the good ol' days of the previous summer when we could just see Steve in person. Streams are tough to grab, and even if you're lucky enough to snatch one, odds are you'll lose it at some point. Last year we also experienced several fun stretches during which we either had sound and no video, or video and no sound. It was like some kind of object lesson in the frailty of high-tech or something.

So this year, we've come up with a foolproof plan to catch a stream, hold onto it, and experience problem-free video bliss for the entire event: we're sacrificing an Apple Desktop Mouse II to the ancient gods of Internet streaming. Sure, it'll be harsh on the mouse when we set it on fire and fling it in a graceful arc from the roof whilst chanting in Sumerian, but hey, we need our Steve-- even a tiny, smeared-out, pixellated Steve. If you're really serious about tuning in to the webcast, we strongly suggest you perform a similar sacrifice. (We know some people who are simply praying to St. Akamai, the patron saint of webcasting, but we think we've got them beat.) Good luck! And to those of you who are actually lucky enough to be in the audience: we hate you, plain and simple.

While a Stevenote is always a happy occasion, we admit that there's a bittersweet side to it as well. When Uncle Steve finishes up his dog and pony show today, he'll have revealed all-- thus effectively putting an end to the wild speculation and rumormongering that's been raging for the past several weeks. Now, some of you might see this as a positive thing, since you believe that the whole point of the speculation is to get at the truth; once the truth is revealed, what use are the rumors, right? Except that we at AtAT don't quite see it that way. To us, the journey is at least as important as the destination, and the end of the long, strange trip is an occasion of at least a little sadness.

But it's not over yet! With a mere hour to go before the iCEO takes the stage, we can still squeeze in just a little more dirt-dishing before we're dealing with facts instead of rumors. Thank the powers that be for AppleInsider, who (as faithful viewer Patrick Brice pointed out) have more juice on iMusic, thought to be one of Apple's new iMovie-like "killer apps" designed to attract people to the Mac. We've already heard that Apple acquired Radialogic's CD-burning software last month, but now there's an even more interesting ingredient in the mix: reportedly Apple broke out the checkbook once more and bought SoundJam MP from Casady & Greene-- along with the product's lead programmer.

SoundJam, as many of you are aware, is one of the premiere MP3 playing and encoding packages available for the Mac platform. It seems that Steve was serious when he apologized for "missing the boat" on CD-RW drives, and is currently in overdrive to fix the situation; iMusic is rumored to combine SoundJam's MP3 capabilities with Radialogic's CD-mastering technology, thus providing Apple's customers with a top-notch custom music application with minimal development required from Apple's already-overworked programmers (and, therefore, minimal delay). It's almost tough to imagine that Apple once suffered from a near-terminal case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome, isn't it?

But wait, there's more! While upcoming Macs will certainly ship with built-in CD-RW drives of some sort to allow Mac users to make use of iMusic, Apple's going a step further; rather than make its existing, non-CD-RW-equipped customers delve into the confusing morass of third party manufacturers for their CD-burning needs, AppleInsider also reports that the company is looking to brand its own line of external CD-RW drives, complete with the inimitable Apple design flair and a bundled copy of iMusic. No word on when these sporty new drives are supposed to hit the market, but if these rumors are correct (and we may know for sure in just a few minutes), Apple is clearly looking to make up for lost time on the whole CD-recordable front.