No fair, we're not ready! Kiss the human race goodbye, because the 'Pods have launched their full-scale invasion a few days early, thus catching the populace unawares and fully susceptible to possession. Whereas counter-invasion intelligence originally projected the onslaught to begin on November 10th, numerous reports indicate that the little white brain-suckers have already successfully infiltrated the retail channel-- and, heaven help us, have even insinuated themselves into some civilian homes. Oh, the humanity.

Our alarm may seem odd to those who believe the iPod to be nothing more than a spiffy-though-pricey MP3 player, but the properly paranoid know full well that nothing good ever comes of a pod invasion; after all, there has to be a reason why Apple chose that name, right? We put it to you, then, that the iPods headed our way are transforming everyone who comes into extended contact with them into mindless slaves of The Mothership. Have you noticed, for example, how strangely positive all the iPod reviews have been so far? Even PC Magazine (yes, that PC Magazine) just gave the iPod four stars and closed with the line "we hope to see a Windows-compatible version in the future." Oh, yeah, no mind-control there or anything...

So if you value your capacity for independent thought, lock the doors and tape up the windows-- and for crying out Pete's sake, stay away from Mac dealers. MacMinute is reporting that some dealers "confirm receiving limited iPod quantities in the past few days"; while they're under orders not to release them to the public until this Saturday, we wouldn't bet that one or two of those insidious little mind-robbers won't attach themselves to a couple of unsuspecting passersby just to get a head start. How else do you explain what faithful viewer Trog stumbled upon-- a weird account of a mysterious Halloween encounter with an iPod-carrying woman displaying "visible alarm" when her 'Pod was spotted ten days early?

We may be too late to sound the general alarm, however; several people, including faithful viewers tenneck and Aaron report having received notice from Apple that their 'Pods have been dispatched and are even now working their way toward their victims. And according to MacInTouch, some poor fellow named Gary Boudreaux claims that an iPod just showed up at his door: "Haven't hooked it up yet, but soon."

Soon, indeed. Run, Gary! Run!!

(By the way, folks, the best way to defeat an iPod's role in the grand scheme for world domination is to send it to us here at AtAT headquarters. We'll, uh... dispose of it for you safely.)

Other than the imminent enslavement of the entire human race by the arrival of the iPod, it's actually sort of a slow news day in the Mac world. How do we know? Well, for one thing, as faithful viewer Porsupah points out, WIRED has sunk to running articles about how the Mac OS X incarnation of the high-end 3D application Maya is "doomed" to fail. But even more telling is that we've sunk to telling you about how WIRED has sunk to running articles about how the Mac OS X incarnation of Maya is doomed to fail. (Hey, it's either this, or a detailed account of what we had for dinner last night.)

Maya, you may recall, caused some serious buzz in the Mac community when its Mac OS X port was originally announced; after all, here was a high-end heavy-hitting developer effectively indicating that Apple's new operating system was at least as powerful and reliable as the other platforms it supports: Windows NT, UNIX, and Linux. In other words, Mac OS X finally makes the Mac platform viable for all sorts of "serious" tasks for which Mac OS 9 and earlier are, uh, perhaps not so well-suited. "Mac OS X: It's Not Just For Breakfast Anymore."

But according to WIRED, "no one in the industry can understand why Alias launched this widely acclaimed product... for the Mac's new and unproven OS X." Indeed, the author calls Maya X's chances of survival "ominously grim" and even forecasts the product's death in "summer 2002." Ooooo, harsh. The reasons why, however, strike us as less than bulletproof. For instance, it's all well and good to list about a dozen Mac 3D apps that have met ignominious demises in the past decade and a half, but, um, news flash: none of those apps was written for the preemptively-multitasking, symmetrically-multiprocessing, memory-protected, UNIX-at-its-core Mac OS X, so now that we've got hardware and an OS that's a little more 3D-friendly, where's the comparison?

Then there's that probably-out-of-context quote by Michael Flaminio of Insanely Great Mac (WIRED provided the wrong URL, we notice), in which he states "I can't see Mac consumers lining up to buy and learn Maya." That might qualify as a death knell-- if Maya were a consumer-targeted application. Indeed, any software product meant to appeal to Mom and Pop that just happens to cost $7500 a pop deserves to fail; good thing Maya's a high-end professional application, then. And while even Alias/Wavefront seems potentially confused about that fact (is it really positioning Maya as a "tool for creating 3D for websites," as WIRED claims? Because the company's own web site implies it's useful "whether you produce digital content for movies, television, games, or interactive media"), we always figured that the Mac OS X port of Maya was intended for design studios who would otherwise be buying Maya anyway-- for Windows, UNIX, or Linux. Now they have the option of running it on Macs instead.

But heck, maybe WIRED is right; maybe all those designers really prefer running Windows, UNIX, and Linux. After all, it's not like the Mac is popular in, say, 2D graphic design or anything, right? Well, since this poor doomed product is going to kick the volumetrically-rendered bucket next summer, we urge all Mac users to do their part and order a copy or two today. What's $7500 when it comes to making a stand for platform loyalty? C'mon, they'll make great stocking-stuffers.

As Mac fans, we have at least one reason to like the current state of the economy and the raging price war in the personal computer industry: it's all sure to thin the herd a little. Walk into any Circuit City computer department and it becomes obvious that, despite their ravishing good looks, it's easy for the Macs to get lost amid a sea of Wintel brands. While that problem is partially solved by the advent of the Apple retail stores, the fact remains that Apple is competing in a crowded market, and if the current economic bloodbath takes out some of the competition, at least Apple might get a little more relative mind share.

And it's not just the little guys who are going under; even Compaq, once mighty enough to swallow Digital whole, was floundering badly enough to opt to be swallowed in turn by Hewlett-Packard. That's not quite as satisfying as watching them spiral slowly into insolvency, granted, but it's still a good thing for Apple-- right now Macs are fighting for shelf space with Pavilions and Presarios, but after the merger, the Compaq brand will be going away, and presumably the Presarios will follow. And there will be much rejoicing.

Hold the phone, though, Betty-- while we've been considering the Hewlett-COMPAQard merger a done deal, apparently the shareholders of the respective companies haven't even approved the marriage, to say nothing of the feds. And if The Register is correct, it sounds to us like the whole shebang is in a bit of peril; reportedly the Hewlett family, who owns five percent of HP, has "announced its intention to vote against the takeover." (Perhaps they don't consider Compaq to be "HP material"?) And to make things worse, David W. Packard (the son of HP's co-founder) has now "expressed concerns" about the proposed merger. Since "the Hewlett and Packard families together control 17 percent" of HP's stock, this deal is starting to look less and less likely.

What's all this mean for Mac fans? Well, if the deal falls through, it might mean that ugly Presarios will continue to take up retail space that should be occupied by Macs instead. On the other hand, it might also mean that we all get to watch Compaq sink ever deeper into oblivion instead of suffering the relatively less embarrassing fate of a simple takeover. So at least we've got that going for us.