Alert the medical journals, because it's time to reevaluate what we know about the insidious phenomenon of LSD flashbacks. Most of the available literature indicates that users of lysergic acid diethylamide can experience symptoms such as "acquired color confusion," "flashes of color," and "geometric pseudohallucinations" for long periods after their last exposure to the drug-- periods of "as long as two years." However, a new case study that's come to light in Japan may indicate that LSD's long-term effects can lie dormant for far longer periods of time, emerging even decades after the last ingestion.

As we all know from the definitive history of Apple's origins (TNT's "Pirates of Silicon Valley"), Steve Jobs dropped his share of acid back in the seventies, though we doubt that he ever considered that his reckless hallucinogen abuse would resurface to bite him in the butt a quarter of a century later. But that's clearly what's happening, because we're at a loss to find any other logical explanation for the new iMacs unveiled in Tokyo. CD-RW drives in the higher-end models, FireWire and iMovie 2 across the board, better speakers, faster G3s-- these are all reasonable and welcome improvements to the iMac product line. But those new patterns-- "Flower Power" and "Blue Dalmatian"-- can only be the product of a severe acid flashback. Thank goodness that some square not hip to Steve's stone-cold groove managed to talk the man down enough to get the go-ahead to keep Indigo and Graphite for the less-groovy and/or less-stoned customers out there.

If, by some odd set of circumstances, you haven't yet seen the iMac's new look, do so, so you know what we're talking about. When we first tuned into Apple's revamped iMac page last night following a hot tip by faithful viewer The Amazing Llama, at first we wondered if the site had been hacked. Then we wondered who would ever buy a computer with lots of pretty flowers all over it. Then we tried to imagine what sort of debilitating mental disorder made anyone at Apple think that what the average consumer really wants is a powder-blue computer covered in white spots like a smurf with some form of contagious disease. It was at that point that we recalled Steve's history of drug use, and all the pieces fell into place. (Then we started wondering just how the heck we're going to come up with "Flower Power" and "Blue Dalmatian" preference settings for AtAT, but that's a whole 'nother mess altogether.)

But perhaps we're judging too harshly. After all, Apple claims that it devoted a year and a half to the creation and perfection of the iMac's new patterns. (If you consider the cost of keeping Apple's design team tripping on hallucinogens for eighteen months, suddenly Apple's recent quarterly loss makes a lot more sense.) Apple does market research to pinpoint exactly what people want, and evidently what people want are iMacs that look like an accident in a 1970s wallpaper factory. We certainly can't argue with research. And to the dozens of you who wrote in calling Apple's new iMac designs "ugly," "butt-ugly," "pug-ugly," "u-GLAY," etc., we're compelled to inform you that, just like us, you're wrong. This is science!

Now that we've established that fact, let's consider the positives of "Flower Power" and "Blue Dalmatian," shall we? First of all, remember that this unveiling took place in Japan-- and we wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese market ate this kind of thing for breakfast. (The cheers present on CNET's RealVideo of the Stevenote may bear out that theory.) And secondly, it's really tough to represent a translucent, textured, three-dimensional piece of modern sculpture in a photo on the web; faithful viewer Graham Parks was present at the special event in Croydon, and was able to examine the new iMacs up close and personal. His estimation? "Flower Power looked awful on the video, but is alright in person... Blue Dalmatian looks really good in that there real world, a kind of mesh pattern." So we'll reserve final judgment for when we see what these things look like right in front of us. Remember, Key Lime wasn't the end of the world, either-- and the Europeans dug it when Steve introduced it in Paris.

But regardless of how the new iMacs sell, Steve clearly needs treatment. As faithful viewer Brian Maranta was horrified to discover, whatever the drugs have done to Steve's grey matter has obviously affected his fashion sense; if floral and canine-coat iMacs aren't evidence enough, you need look no further than Mr. Mercurial's choice of dress for the occasion: a pinstripe suit and a silver tie. What, no turtleneck? No jeans? And perhaps even more disturbing, no "one more thing" at the end of the keynote? The man's just not himself these days...

Amidst all the "Blue Flower Dalmatian Power" controversy, we fully expect that many of you may have glossed right over some of the, shall we say, less disturbing surprises that surfaced during Uncle Steve's latest dog and pony show. (Or maybe you were just too confused by his suit and tie to pay close attention. Either way.) If we had to pick a single announcement from MacWEEK's summary to be the most significant-- not counting, of course, the revelation that Apple is now pushing prints over solids-- the winner would be the nVIDIA announcement, hands down.

If you've been following the wacky world of 3D performance on the Mac for any length of time, you know the history already; Apple has relied on ATI for Mac graphics circuitry for years, now, but performance has generally lagged behind 3D technology in the Wintel world, and ATI's poor driver support (not to mention its unfortunate slip of the tongue about top secret Apple gear last summer) prompted Apple to look elsewhere. Enter nVIDIA, widely regarded as the 3D speed champ on the PC side of the fence; at last month's San Francisco Stevenote, Apple announced that most of its new Power Mac G4 systems would ship with nVIDIA's mid-range GeForce2 MX pre-installed. Thus marked the end of ATI's long-held status as Apple's sole graphics supplier.

The thing is, while the Mac folks who craved real 3D speed (gamers, natch) welcomed the arrival of the GeForce2 MX, they mostly regarded it as a promising hint of things to come. Since the MX is a mid-range chip and ATI's RADEON still beats it in some situations, its real value was as evidence that Macs might one day get to use nVIDIA's higher-end gear-- namely, the upcoming GeForce3, code-named NV20, which was expected to blow everything else out of the water. Well, you gamers out there had better start warming up your trigger fingers and hocking your parents' valuables, because as faithful viewer Adam Koppe noted, the pipe dreams have come true: GeForce3 is indeed coming to the Mac. It's available as a build-to-order option in Power Macs right now, though the chip itself won't ship until the end of next month.

Now here's the part that really has us giggling: not only are we going to get this stunning 3D hardware on the Mac, but we're also getting it first. That's right, Apple scored a major coup-- the upcoming graphics technology that hardcore PC gamers have been drooling over for so long is actually going to be available for the Macintosh before it ever graces a Wintel system. Oooh, we can hear the gnashing of teeth already! nVIDIA's home page even includes a big, splashy animation introducing the GeForce3 "for Power Mac," and it prominently features a picture of Apple's tower in all its Graphite glory. This bodes very well for the Apple-nVIDIA relationship, we don't mind saying. It's so rare that Mac users get to enjoy new technologies-- especially game-related technologies-- before the Wintel folks, so enjoy it while it lasts.

By the way, the news reports are echoing what Steve apparently said at the keynote: that the GeForce3 will be a $600 BTO option. (Hey, when we said "high-end," we meant it.) But faithful viewer Ted Slater kindly noted that if you mosey on over to the Apple Store and add a GeForce3 to your basic $1699 Power Mac, you really only pay $450 more. And if you toss one into a top-of-the-line 733 MHz model, the cost is only $350. That's still a hefty chunk of change, sure, but it sure beats $600-- and the serious gamers will care enough to buy the very best.

Okay, we're just about all keynoted out, here-- but we'd be remiss if we signed off without mentioning the scrummy new update to iTunes, Apple's free virtual jukebox software which debuted at last month's San Francisco Macworld Expo. We've personally found version 1.0 invaluable for its ability to generate infinite tapestries of swirling, pulsating psychedelia while playing punk renditions of old Partridge Family hits live over the Internet via AirPort. Who says computer technology hasn't enriched our lives?

But while version 1.0 showed us just how much fun passively staring at a screen for six hours straight can really be, Apple's gone and upped the ante; as faithful viewer Nick the Amazing (what can we say, he begged us to mention him) reports, Apple has just released iTunes 1.1. Apparently the latest version "provides a number of improvements"-- unspecified ones, of course-- but more importantly, it adds support for thirty-one external CD-R and CD-RW drive mechanisms. That means that you no longer need the internal CD-RW drive in a month-old Power Mac or a day-old iMac to take advantage of the CD-burning capability built into iTunes; with 1.1, odds are your external CD-R drive will work just fine. So instead of just staring at the pretty colors all day long, you can now take an active role in your digital entertainment cycle by producing your own custom audio CDs from your MP3 collection.

We should note that the arrival of iTunes 1.1 represents yet another fulfilled ship-date promise from last month's keynote; first the titanium PowerBook G4 shipped before the end of January, then the SuperDrive-enabled Power Mac G4 shipped before the end of February-- and now this. Uncle Steve indicated that an iTunes update to support external CD-R drives would appear within "sixty to ninety days." By our count, iTunes 1.1 made it out in only forty-four. Badmouth Apple's newfound obsession with floral patterns all you want, but if that's the price we need to pay for Apple hitting its announced ship dates, hey, we'll take it...