Okay, so now that we're all mired squarely in the double-digit months, out in these parts, at least, we're starting to notice frost on the windows in the morning. Trees are going all Crayola on us. Long sleeves and sweaters are suddenly de rigeur unless you're going for the blue-lipped look that's all the rage on the runways in Milan this fall. Summer is but a distant memory, like, well, two weeks ago last Monday. Put it all together and we can't help but feel that when Steve said that Panther would ship "before the end of the year," he might not have been all that overcautious after all. There are only, what, 85 days left in the year, right? And as of today, Apple still hasn't said Word One about an actual release date.

That might have come as a mild disappointment to AppleInsider, who published a cryptic little note about Apple allegedly lifting some sort of embargo this morning that was to allow the release of details about a new product. What new product? AppleInsider didn't say, although judging by its price point (apparently the only known detail about the mystery whatsit), AI hinted that it was probably Panther. The only problem is, of course, that no official Panther announcement materialized today; then again, neither did any other announcement from One Infinite Loop, so maybe that embargo just hasn't quite "embargone" just yet.

Don't give up hope, though, because MacRumors suggests that the announcement will come tomorrow, instead. Of course, they make it clear that the "tomorrow" thing is based entirely on "one report" and they stuck it onto Page 2, so there isn't exactly a ton of "oomph" behind the assertion. Meanwhile, everyone's pretty sure that, yes, Panther went gold last week, and yes, we'll be able to get our sweaty little mitts on it by the end of the month, but none of that seems real until Apple opens its yap and honks out an official press release. Until then, all we can do is sit around eating grapes and being antsy.

Why are we so jumpy? Well, largely it's an issue of symmetry. Remember how recent rumors pegged the Panther ship date as the 24th? Well, you might recall that Mac OS X 10.0 shipped on the 24th as well-- of March in 2001. And it just so happens that Apple issued a press release indicating that the operating system had gone gold and formally setting that March 24th ship date. Guess when that press release went out? Yup: on the 7th. So you can imagine how the lack of a "Panther's gone gold and it'll ship on the 24th" press release today has us a little off-kilter, and even starting to doubt-- irrationally, mind you-- the many, many reports that Panther is off at duplication and will ship by the end of the month.

Especially since we're all out of grapes.

Meanwhile, don't forget that Panther isn't the only thing that Apple has promised by year's end; even as the market for Windows-compatible digital music download services strives to redefine the phrase "obscene glut," it seems that the only company who doesn't have an offering ready or imminent is the company who started the whole tussle in the first place. Meaning, the iTunes Music Store is still Mac-only, and while every company from Head & Shoulders to Red Lobster has an online music store poised for launch, we still have no release date for the Windows version of the iTMS any firmer than "by the end of the year."

Back to AppleInsider, then, who claims that iTMS for Windows-- also known among the Jedi as "Dark iTMS"-- is "ahead of schedule" as far as development goes, with "anonymous reports" indicating that "active online functionality of the Windows store was in place as of this past weekend." That would certainly imply that the sucker is ready to roll, at least from a technical standpoint. So what's the holdup, you ask? Well, our own gut feeling is that Apple still hasn't settled on which metal to brush ("aluminum is so played out; how about tungsten?"), but AI claims that Dark iTMS might be Apple's "Hey, look over there-- it's Elvis and the pope, and they're playing ping-pong!" factor for its quarterly earnings conference call next week.

See, apparently Apple "is widely rumored to post a shortfall in revenue due to Power Mac and PowerBook shipment issues throughout the fiscal quarter," so the company needs to keep some sort of major distracto-bomb up its sleeve to run damage control on the lousy numbers. So the plan at this point seems to be to post the disappointing quarterly results on the 15th, wait a little while to let the press get the gloating out of its system, and then win 'em all back to the side of fawning sycophancy with a whiz-bang rollout of Dark iTMS "by month's end." Indeed, the announcement could come as early as the day of the earnings conference call itself, if the numbers stink really bad.

This is all just speculation, of course, and the real holdup of the Dark iTMS launch could be something completely different, such as a crippling psychological reluctance to release anything so cool for a platform with the style and grace of an elephant in a lime green short-sleeve suit trying to tap dance while its legs are asleep. (Still, our money's on the tungsten.) One way or the other, though, Dark iTMS is coming, and probably sooner rather than later. Time to record that secret holographic plea for help in a nearby droid and kiss your home planet goodbye...

Say, remember a couple of weeks back when we mentioned the rumors that Apple was angling to solve the issue of the PowerPC 970's matter-vaporizing heat output by grafting some kind of wacky sump-pump Reanimator-style green-stuff-bubbling-through-tubes liquid cooling system into the eventual PowerBook G5? Well, the rumors just got a little less rumory, and the good news is that if Apple does indeed go the liquid cooling route, it doesn't necessarily have to turn the PowerBook's internals into something reminiscent of a crystal meth lab. (No comments about the G5 and excessive "speed," please.)

It seems that the EE Times has an article on a small company called Cooligy, which is developing active liquid-based chip-cooling systems based on technology originally slapped together at Stanford University. Basically, instead of piping water to and from the processor using what is essentially glorified fish tank apparatus as in those "traditional" liquid cooling kits that are so popular with the overclockers over there in Terminal Geekville, the Cooligy system uses something called Active Micro-Channel Cooling, which apparently allows the whole liquid transfer system to exist pretty much as part of the chip itself.

AMC involves "etching hundreds of channels on a piece of silicon" using "techniques used to make semiconductors and pharmaceuticals" (Aha! The meth lab is involved somehow!) so that said chunk of silicon can replace that whole plastic-tubes assembly that would prove to be just two hairs shy of wildly impractical in a portable computer. Said micro-etched silicon chunk sits on top of the processor and acts sort of like one very thin, very long, and very tightly-wound tube carrying water toward and then away from the surface of the processor. You know, kind of like a teensy small intestine, only carrying water instead of, um, partly-digested food.

Yuck.

Unfortunate comparisons to bowels notwithstanding, Cooligy says that its system can dissipate up to 1,000 watts per square centimeter, which ought to be plenty of cooling action even for today's G5s, let alone lower-wattage models that should emerge early next year once IBM has its 90-nanometer mojo workin'. And here's the kicker: EE Times reports that "Cooligy said that it has already developed a prototype system with the help of companies like Intel, Apple Computer, and Advanced Micro Devices." So Apple is apparently getting in on the ground floor, because it's all too aware that nine fans and four independent thermal zones just aren't going to cut it in a G5 portable-- unless there's a massive untapped market for a microwave-sized laptop with a ten-minute battery life of which we were previously unaware.