The past two years have shown us lots of things happening in the Mac world that most of us may never have expected to see. For instance, raise your hand if, two years ago, you could have foreseen Apple releasing a consumer system that would become the best-selling home computer in the retail market. Hmm, not many hands out there. See what we mean? The production and success of the iMac is the big one, but we've had lots of surprises along the way-- not the least of which is that not only is Apple still afloat today, but it's also growing and thriving. Sure, there's plenty of work still left to do, but the sheer volume of progress made in the past twenty-four months has been staggering.

For those of you whose hearts are a little shaky around stunning news, you might want to sit down for this one... You probably had some palpitations when Apple actually started showing television commercials (and good ones) again beginning with the award-winning but abstract "Think Different" ad. But what would happen if third parties, such as Apple's resellers, actually started spending their own money on advertising Apple's wares? We're thinking our hearts would go into infarction, or arrest, or possibly they'd just plain explode. After all, you've all seen just how much marketing muscle the likes of CompUSA and Best Buy throw behind selling Macs, right? We're lucky if Macs get even a sixth of a page buried in the middle of the Sunday circular.

So what's being reported over at Apple Insider has Apple-watching hearts exploding all over the place, coating the world in a sticky goo of disbelief and anticipation. (Eeeyyeww. Nothing gets that stuff out of upholstery.) Basically, it's rumored that Sears, the latest addition to the stable of national iMac resellers, actually plans to air their own commercials, paid for with their own money, pushing iMacs. Keep an eye peeled for the ads to air later this month, as Sears prepares to roll out the fruit-flavored systems in time for Memorial Day weekend. Wow, someone else paying to advertise Apple computers... What's next, Macs making inroads back into the enterprise market? (Check back in two years.)

You knew your PowerBook was rugged, you knew it was durable-- after all, you've dragged it all over the world, to hell and back, and it took a licking and kept on ticking. But has your PowerBook survived an actual tornado? You probably know about the twisters that ripped through Oklahoma and Kansas recently-- they were bad enough to be considered national news. In the midst of that tragic devastation, though, a reader wrote to O'Grady's PowerPage with a story of survival that's an inspiration to laptops everywhere.

After the tornado hit, this reader went to his office to investigate the damage, expecting to find his PowerBook 1400 (among other things) completely trashed. Instead, he found it running, despite being "drenched in water and covered in dirt, glass, and insulation." Emptying out the water and adjusting the contrast control button brought the screen up-- the system was actually working. He shut it down, removed the battery, and spent the next day taking the unit apart and cleaning the circuitry with alcohol. After reassembly, a Power Manager reset, and a PRAM zap, the system "has worked perfectly." Don't try this at home, kiddies; this guy is obviously very lucky, and throwing your PowerBook in the pool just to see if it'll survive is probably not a good move. Still, we're amazed at this PowerBook 1400's ability to take some serious abuse; they're tough little machines, and we're glad that they use their power for good instead of evil.

What's next? We're half-expecting to hear from another tornado survivor who will report that the force of the twister slammed his PowerBook G3 edgewise into a tree with enough force to embed it eight inches into the wood, but when he extracted it with the assistance of a backhoe, he found that it booted right off of battery power and allowed him to play Unreal while waiting for the insurance people to arrive. When the next worldwide cataclysm arrives and dooms the human race to extinction, we strongly suspect that the only survivors will be cockroaches, Apple PowerBooks, and Timex watches.

We admit it-- we're not big fans of the Tricon "holy trinity of fast food franchises." Even before the AtAT staff all became vegan, the food at Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut struck us as, well, kinda gross. About the most involved we'd get with any of that food was a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut once in a while, just because they were readily available as a quick meal-on-the-go from the college dining halls. And these days we have to object to Taco Bell just on principle, because that damn chihuahua irritates us to no end. (Don't even get us started on the inexplicable push to unite KFC and Taco Bell into a single baffling restaurant...)

That said, though, we can't dislike those restaurants entirely-- especially now that ehMac reports that, as part of their "Defeat the DarkSide" Star Wars: Episode I promotion, they're giving away iMacs. So if you chow down at any of those three restaurants, make sure you enter to win, because you might get a side order of iMac with your Gorditas and your bucket of Extra-Crispy™. (There are other prizes, of course, like a Lincoln Navigator, a trip around the world, and even an actual hovercraft Land Speeder-- but as we all know, nothing's cooler than an iMac.)

So if you've been longing for an iMac but you can't quite justify the expense, it's time to start maxing out your diet with tons of fat, sodium, and dubious nutritional content. Who knows? You might just get lucky. ;-)