Say, is it just us being way out of touch again, or has it really been a while since Apple whipped out the checkbook and bought up a small company or three? For a while, there, the acquisitions seemed to be coming fast and furious (Raycer, PowerSchool, Spruce, Nothing Real, Emagic, etc.), but we can't recall any mad shopping sprees of late. No wonder Apple's got $6.45 billion in cash piled up in huge wads in a secret underground chamber somewhere: it's gotten stingy with the buyouts lately! A multibillion-dollar company that isn't chewing up smaller entities like some crazed mutant shark with a bad case of the munchies, digesting the choice bits, and spitting out the remains? That's practically unpatriotic or something.

But that's not to say that Apple isn't shopping around-- or even that it hasn't completed an acquisition or two on the sly. MacRumors passes along an unconfirmed rumor that Apple "may have acquired Vancouver, BC-based SchemaSoft," a singularly boring company whose web site is soaking in 180-proof buzzword sauce. "Software components that facilitate the workflow of digital information"? "Repurpose content and prepare content for multi-targeted publishing systems"? "Maximize its reuse value"? Way to think outside the box to get proactive with the synergy of the paradigm, there. But at least the company cranks out some code that can read and write Microsoft Office data formats; assuming Apple did buy SchemaSoft (the only link we can turn up is that the company lists Apple as a client), here's hoping that iWork gains better and more transparent Office file compatibility-- and that Apple's own web site doesn't get overrun by an impenetrable wall of muffinheaded BizSpeak jargon. We hear that stuff can be contagious.

Meanwhile, SchemaSoft isn't the only company allegedly on Apple's shopping list: faithful viewer baldprof notes that, as reported by Think Secret, Apple is apparently also "currently in talks" to buy a startup called HipSolve Media, which has been flogging tech that "offers music labels and publishers the ability to distribute their music directly to customers, complete with digital rights management," thereby completely bypassing those pesky money-grubbing third-party services like, oh, say, the iTunes Music Store. So is Apple looking to rebrand HipSolve's "iHoopla" technology and turn it into a new splinter of the iTunes digital music commerce platform? Or is the company simply nervous that iHoopla could render the iTMS obsolete, so it's buying HipSolve to kill it? Only time will tell. Our own personal guess is that Steve and the gang just want the rights to the name "iHoopla," because, well, who wouldn't?

So this is all we've got on the acquisition front? Rumors (and unconfirmed ones, at that) that Apple's looking to buy one company that makes Office format translation filters and another that provides artist-to-customer downloadable music technology? Wow, that's... pretty underwhelming. After all, Apple's got some serious buying power with nearly $6.5 billion in its wallet, so what's with the alleged offer to buy up HipSolve for a measly $3.6 million? Here's hoping that the next buyout rumors are a little juicier; a half-billion cash purchase of Krispy Kreme, anyone? After all, the one big shortcoming of the iPod product line is that you can't buy them glazed.

Okay, the honeymoon's over-- we've had this new PowerBook for a week, now, and we've recovered sufficiently from the Blissed-Out Daze of New Macdom to say this straight out: while we totally love the speed, the screen, and just about everything else about this svelte hunka-hunka burnin' aluminum, the new trackpad is, to be brutally frank, annoying the living bejeezus out of us. Not the two-finger scrolling thing, which, as it turns out, is pure genius; we're not at all partial to using a scrollwheel on a mouse, which feels somehow hokey and unnatural to us, but simply using two fingers on a trackpad instead of one to scroll a window vertically and/or horizontally, well, that single ridiculously useful and intuitive feature alone was practically worth the price of the whole PowerBook.

Or, rather, it would have been, if the trackpad weren't so flawed in other far more vital ways. For one thing, even on the fastest setting, the tracking feels slower than crosstown traffic on Parade Day. And on our unit, at least, the trackpad button is irksomely stiff and mushy; it doesn't so much "click" as "smoosh." That wouldn't be much of an annoyance if we could rely on tapping the pad itself to click, but getting taps to register is unforgivably hit-and-miss, and for some reason, when using tap-to-click, the old double-click-and-drag maneuver to select a block of words (which we use constantly-- seriously, we really do) doesn't actually work at all. It worked on the Pismo, and probably on all PowerBooks made in at least the past five or six years... with the notable exception of the brand-spankin'-newest models with the scrolling trackpad, which means we have to punt and use the overly-stiff-'n'-smooshy hardware button quite a lot, and our wrists aren't pleased.

And yet, we seem to be among the lucky ones, because other peoples' trackpads are reportedly misbehaving in far more serious ways: faithful viewer Paul tipped us off to a rash of "new trackpad" complaints at MacInTouch (by way of AppleInsider) which claim that several units are "failing to respond at all for short periods of time," and even delivering static electric shocks. While we've yet to be zapped, we have noticed that, in some situations, we have to drag our fingers across the trackpad back and forth a few times before the cursor even budges. That can't be good.

The good news is that, as faithful viewer Glen Malaspina points out, Apple has officially acknowledged that all is not right in Trackpadville. Sure, all it's done as yet is post a technote admitting that the cursor on new PowerBooks might "temporarily stop tracking" and that "Apple is aware of this issue and is investigating," but that's a start. So far the only workarounds listed are to make sure you're only using one finger (duh) and to reset a stuck trackpad by placing an "entire palm directly onto the whole trackpad for 3 to 4 seconds" and then removing it "in one smooth motion." Sounds like voodoo to us, but hey, it's slightly less trouble than anything involving freshly-spilled chicken blood, so we'll take it.

None of this is to say that the new PowerBooks aren't the bomb anyway; the trackpad annoyances, for us, at least, haven't been a show-stopper, and the other features more than make up for the bother. Like being able to make the keyboard light up by covering up the speaker grilles, for example. You can't beat that for entertainment value. Ooooh, glowy.

Are you so anxious to get your grubby lil' paws on Mac OS X 10.4-- that's "Tiger" to us cool kids, ya know-- that you're gnawing off your own limbs in anticipation? That could be a problem, since Uncle Steve only said that Tiger would ship in the first half of this year, which means it can arrive as late as June 30th and still be technically on time. By then, even if you're a slow and thorough chewer, you're not likely to have any limbs left-- which would probably seriously reduce your enjoyment of the operating system in the first place. What to do?

Well, you could always hinder your limb-chewing progress by coating your arms and legs in MAVALA Stop or bat guano or something, but before you go to such extremes just to save your limbs, it's worth noting that you may not have to hold out for quite so long after all. Remember about a week ago when we alluded to hints that Tiger might ship a bit earlier than the end of June? Now Think Secret gives us even more hope-- and a date. Reportedly Apple is preparing to announce Tiger's imminent release at a media event slated for April 1st, with the operating system reaching customers and store shelves by April 15th. That's less than a month away-- the odds are pretty good that you'll still have at least a leg or two left by then, and mousing with one's toes is probably a lot easier than it sounds.

In addition to citing "sources close to the company" when tossing around the April 15th date, Think Secret also points out numerous clues that Tiger will ship in April, including more frequent developer builds of the OS, Apple's alleged doubling of its estimates for software sales by the end of May, the planned release of Tiger-only software apps at NAB on April 18th, and the expected introduction of Tiger-preloaded iMacs and eMacs in mid-April. Okay, sure, plenty of that is also predicated on info from "sources close to the company," but if it's still not good enough for you, then take a gander at eWEEK, which is arguably closer to "legitimate press." eWEEK sides with Think Secret, claiming that its own company sources confirm the April 15th in-stores date. So apparently we'll all be Tigering ourselves into a frenzy sooner rather than later.

April 15th: finally, something good to associate with that date! And wow, is it really possible that Amazon.com's specified Tiger ship date (most recently reported to be April 18th) was based on something more relevant than a series of coin tosses and games of rock-paper-scissors? It's like finding out that Santa Claus is actually real, or that the Milli Vanilli guys were really singing after all. Of course, it was probably just a coincidence, but still, it's as close to spotting the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich as we're ever likely to get.