Caution: too much peace and contentment over the weekend can turn the following Monday into the emotional and psychological equivalent of Brazilian needle torture! (Or, indeed, needle torture from any culture, really. Your pick.) To avoid excessive pain when returning to work/school/life on Monday, we here at AtAT prescribe a solid dose of psychic unease to fester throbbingly at the back of one's mind, always preventing fun from reaching dangerous levels. Let's see, now... seeing as you're all Mac fans, how about a lawsuit against Apple which alleges to have proof that the company's retail stores aren't doing nearly as well as Apple has told Wall Street and the feds? Ouch, now there's some ickiness to make the prospect of Monday seem like a leisurely saunter through the Lollipop Forest.

The good Lollipop Forest, we mean. Not the Lollipop Forest of Death. Because, you know, if it were that one, it would wreck the whole simile.

Anyway, here's the deal: faithful viewer Bernd Schnitker dropped us straight into a seething well of dread over at Think Secret, in the form of an extensive article detailing what appear to be "anomalies" in Apple's retail accounting policies. Surely you've heard Apple mention repeatedly that its own stores aren't shown any special treatment when it comes to access to in-demand products or the wholesale prices they pay for them, right? Well, now some former Apple dealers suing the company allege that "Apple is defrauding shareholders and misleading the public by misrepresenting the profitability of its stores," and they claim they've got the invoices to prove it.

These invoices, claim the plaintiffs, prove that Apple "has engaged in unfair and deceptive accounting practices and... [has] amassed unlawful profits and/or ill gotten gains" (oooh, we love that phrase!) by revealing that Apple's own retail stores pay far less for Apple's products than other resellers do. Third-party resellers reportedly pay over $100 more than Apple's retail outlets for the same iMacs, over $200 and even $300 more for PowerBooks, etc. The price differentials get even more extreme when it comes to software and service: whereas AppleCare Protection Plans cost resellers $115 to $250, Apple retail store pay only-- and we have to assume this isn't a typo-- "$2.70 to about $10." A copy of FileMaker Pro (remember, Apple owns the company) that costs dealers $261.50 allegedly costs the Apple stores "$5.81."

Given that Apple has explicitly told the SEC and anyone else who'll listen that "the company's retail stores pay the same dollar amount for products" as its third-party resellers, this could indeed be a teensy little problem. Think Secret stops short of accusing Apple of fraud, noting that "idiosyncrasies of Apple's accounting" may be making things look worse than they are, but they've posted scans of the invoices themselves, and it's tough to argue with numbers in black and white. This whole issue may turn out to be a lively subject of discussion at Apple's annual shareholders' meeting next month. If you go, we suggest you bring a riot helmet; things could get ugly.

So there you go: a healthy dollop of angst to dwell at the back of your mind throughout the weekend so that your inevitable confrontation with Monday doesn't seem that bad. Don't forget: too much ha ha, pretty soon boo hoo. No, don't thank us; your beaming smile is all the gratitude we need.

Oooh, this is getting good: remember last month when we said we'd heard "maddeningly unspecific whispers" that "something huge" was coming in April? And remember a week later when we said we were starting to think that maybe-- just maybe-- that "something huge" would turn out to be an iMac G5? Well, new whispers bubbling through the rumor mill are getting less unspecific by the day, and while solid evidence is as lacking as ever, it's starting to look like maybe we weren't completely crazy after all. (Specifically about this, we mean. As far as anything else is concerned, sure, we're completely crazy. But on this subject, there's a solid 1% chance that we're 1% sane. Maybe.)

Check it out, sports fans: AppleInsider reports that Apple is scrambling to update just about its entire Mac lineup, and that "both the 1GHz eMac and iMac products have just recently been updated to end-of-life (EOL) status." That doesn't necessarily mean much, but generally speaking, a product only gets EOLed if something is waiting in the wings to take its place. Now, we haven't the foggiest idea how this stuff works, but we imagine that sometimes the replacement might even turn out to be the exact same product but with a different graphics card and a lower price tag, so the whole "EOL" thing doesn't exactly scream "iMac G5"-- but this quote sure does: "Meanwhile, the company's iMac product line is rumored to be next in line for adoption of the PowerPC G5 processor." It doesn't get much clearer than that.

Not that claims of the presence of "rumors" are gospel or anything, of course, but there seems to be an increasing amount of this stuff floating around right now. Mac OS Rumors now claims that "iMac G5s are nearly ready to roll and the only things holding back the new Power Macs are supplies of new motherboards and higher-clocked PowerPC 970FX CPUs." MOSR's timeline conflicts badly with our own personal pipe dream of new G5s within the next two or three weeks and iMac G5s in April, but truth be told, it's not much worse: "If the new Power Macs ship on schedule in mid to late April, sources believe that a new iMac family with 1-2 G5 models and 2-3 G4 models will follow 5-8 weeks after that-- definitely no later than Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference at the end of June." We sure hope we don't have to wait that long, but even if we do, hey, we have a feeling we'll survive.

Now, we know what you're thinking... and it's disgusting. Stop it. But we also know what you're thinking about the iMac G5: would Apple dare ship one while the PowerBook is still a G4? Okay, sure, it's a little weird to think that the company's professional laptop would be slower than its consumer desktop, but considering that the markets for the two products are so diametrically opposite, it's not like people who were going to buy a PowerBook are going to opt for an iMac instead. And besides-- who says the PowerBook will still be a G4? AppleInsider also refers to new PowerBooks coming "this spring," though there's no word on whether they'll pack G5s or G4s; but with the 90-nanometer G5s now available, it's not completely impossible that Apple could ship a PowerBook G5 within the next few months. It's unlikely, sure, but not impossible.

So the bottom line is, if the prospect of a G5-powered iMac doesn't rev your engine, remember, there are rumors of all kinds of goodies coming down the pike this spring. And considering that we're just now hitting that there "equinox" thingy, 'tis the season, right?

Hey, everybuggy, it's Friday again, and you know what that means: that's right, it's 2-For-1 Scene Day! Oh, you thought it was Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day? Well, normally, yeah, sure-- but this is the third Friday of March in a leap year whose digits add up to a multiple of six, so it's this 2-For-1 dealie instead. Didn't you read the manual? But hey, no need to get upset just 'cause you were all in the mood for some wildly off-topic Microsoft-bashing; since this scene is a 2-for-1, there's no reason why at least one of the two plot points can't be a nice solid jab at those goofs in Redmond.

Sadly, neither of them does have anything to do with Microsoft, but at least there's no reason why. Feel better? We know we do.

So, without further ado, Plot Point 1: Macworld UK reports that iPhoto is finally a complete application out there in Europe; after a mere 26 months since iPhoto first came into existence, European Mac users can now actually use it to order books and prints-- features that we U.S. users have long taken for granted. Nevertheless, these features aren't exactly late-- merely on-time-late, because at the last Expo Steve had promised them by March, and, well, it's still March. And better on-time-late than never, and now Europeans can suffer the same crippling economic hardship that U.S. Mac users endure, what with spending up to 23% of our gross income on those accursedly nifty clothbound books. Europeans take heed: they're like crack, only more expensive and available in several tasteful colors.

There's just one teensy little snag: in order to take advantage of these wallet-sucking features that they've been waiting for over two years to enjoy, Macworld UK reports that Apple's European customers need to be using iPhoto 4, the first version of iPhoto that isn't free unless you buy a whole new Mac. We haven't confirmed this (yeah, like that's our job), but if it's true, we have to imagine that at least a few users are miffed about getting strung along for so long, only to find out they now need to shell out the pounds/euros/ducats/whatever for iLife '04 in order to participate in that whole print-buying, book-making process. Here's hoping that when the iTunes Music Store finally gets over to Europe, customers won't have to shell out for some kind of secret decoder ring or something to make it work.

And speaking of the iTMS, that brings us nicely to Plot Point 2: faithful viewer David Triska sent us to a Rocky Mountain News article (via MacRumors) which reveals that the Grateful Dead is currently "finalizing a deal with Apple's iTunes to make every live note they've ever recorded available for download." Deadheads rejoice! We won't even hazard a guess as to what percentage of the band's fans are hip to the whole downloading music thing, but considering how many shows the Dead have played over the years, we have to think that adding every live performance to the iTMS's catalog would at least quadruple its size. Well, okay, maybe not, but think about it: conservatively, assume that the band played 10 songs a show and 100 shows a year for 30 years. That's 30,000 new tracks for the iTMS right there. Yikes.

Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir seems to think it's a happening arrangement: "At 99 cents a tune, it's a pretty decent price, because most of our tunes are pretty long." Ooooh, here's hoping Weir doesn't wind up disappointed; we seem to recall that the iTMS has an "album-only" policy on songs over a certain length, and a quick scan of the Dead's existing available catalog shows three over-12-minute tracks not available for individual 99-cent purchase. Maybe Apple will make an exception? It's never cool when Apple turns into The Man, dig?

And those are your 2-for-1 plot points for today. But you're just going to keep pouting about that Microsoft thing, aren't you? Oh, all right, ya big baby, here: Steve Ballmer still looks like Frank Barone on amphetamines. Happy now?