Pop quiz! Please name the next two numbers in the following sequence: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, _, _. If you answered "1" and "1," congratulations! You possess the pattern-recognition ability to predict the general look and color scheme of Apple's upcoming product lines. If you answered "3" and "7," you're sadly in need of a brain tune-up. Report to your local neurosurgeon for maintenance work. (If you answered "Volvo" and "chicken," you're too far gone; you've trashed this brain and should probably replace it outright. Try eBay.)

Our point is this: Apple has released two entirely new chassis designs since the Power Mac G4 Cube first limped onto store shelves last summer with its award-winning compactness, clean lines, rounded right angles, and distinctly silvery-metallic look. The first was the PowerBook G4, with which revision Apple ditched the black plastics and swoopy curves of the previous three PowerBooks and moved to an aesthetic featuring compactness, clean lines, rounded right angles, and a distinctly silvery-metallic look. The second is the new iBook; gone are the colored plastics and swoopy curves of the original design, replaced instead with compactness, clean lines, rounded right angles, and a distinctly whitish-silvery look. Getting the picture?

Now, before you start going on about Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian iMacs, please keep in mind that the iMac is still using fundamentally the same hardware design it's had since 1999; similarly, the faster Power Macs introduced in January are sporting a chassis virtually unchanged since the original blue-and-white G3s. So it's no wonder those products are currently the odd ducks in the line-up-- but as faithful viewer newwavedave points out, if Mac OS Rumors is correct, it won't be long before those two products at least partially inherit the Cube Aesthetic that's all the rage in Apple's design labs this season.

Reportedly the next-generation iMacs that most of us are expecting this summer feature a "silver/white theme... very similar in color to the present iBooks." And after one last hurrah in the form of a minor Power Mac revision within the next couple of months, that product's existing chassis design will be replaced with a "dramatic new stylized enclosure." Surprisingly enough, early versions of that enclosure eschew the "bulging polycarbonate plastic panels" and "gentle curves" of the current design, instead embracing a "stamped aluminum frame" with a nearly-square geometry and "rounded" corners and edges. Even if these aluminum Power Macs are indeed anodized blue or green as MOSR suggests, the metallic theme remains. (We're expecting anodized PowerBooks by then, anyway.)

So that's the scoop, kids; it looks like Apple's hooked on this whole straight-lines-and-metal kick for the foreseeable future. Adjust your wardrobes accordingly, but don't go too nuts-- for all we know, this time next year Apple may be big into wood grain and burlap.

By now most of you are aware that one of the most distinctive and innovative aspects of Apple's new retail stores is the Genius Bar. If you're not up to speed on this concept, here's the spiel: every single store will always have a designated "Mac Genius" (yes, that's the actual job title) on duty, whose sole purpose is to answer any Mac-related questions that customers might have. Whether it's an elderly first-time buyer who wants to know what she needs to research her family tree or a hardcore power user with a bafflingly unbootable PowerBook, the Mac Genius is there to help anyone who bellies up to the bar with a question or problem. (It took us a while to make the connection between the Genius Bar and the traditional dynamic of bartenders listening to customers pouring out their problems. We may be slow, but be usually get there eventually.)

Well, as it turns out, as faithful viewer Rover pointed out, Apple is still looking for Mac Geniuses for its stores opening in Newport Beach, Palo Alto, and Minneapolis at the Mall of America. If you're a local (or willing to relocate) and you think you've got what it takes, start brushing up on that Mac trivia and apply. Be warned, however; this isn't just another Mac tech support position. If Apple's serious about its posted job description, you'd better be ready to display some mad skillz and bleed six colo-- bleed translucen-- uh, "bleed different."

Get this-- the qualifying Mac Genius candidate "skillfully restores ailing Macs back to full health," "comfortably translates 'techno-jargon' into laymen's terms," and "genuinely enjoys helping others make the most of their Macs." That's pretty standard stuff. But in addition, he or she also "handles a Mac like Yo Yo Ma plays the cello," "would move to Timbuktu if they required all computers to be Macs," "has been able to find Cupertino, CA on a US map since the age of 12," and "would rather be in the front row of a Macworld [Expo] keynote than have free cable for a year." In other words, "competent" and "expert" aren't enough; the true Mac Genius also needs to be flat-out "fanatical."

As for us, well, yeah, we'd love to assume the role of Mac Genius at one of the three rumored Boston-area stores; Apple's posted description fits us to a T (although that "free cable" part was a close call). But working for Apple in any capacity would pretty much mean that we'd have to cease production of AtAT, and we're not quite ready to do that just yet. Be aware, however, that if you become a Mac Genius out in this neck of the woods, we're probably going to come in and visibly envy your job on a fairly regular basis. We guarantee it'll get annoying pretty quickly, but we'll try to keep the mournful sighs to a minimum.

We know you folks are all torqued up for next week's Worldwide Developers Conference, especially given Steve Jobs's long-awaited "fireside chat" slated for Monday morning. But outside of the Mac community, there's a whole lot more attention being paid to another little annual conference known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo-- or E3, as the hipsters like to call it. For the uninitiated, close your eyes and picture Macworld Expo. Okay, now replace all the Mac-specific stuff with video games. Then make all the booths bigger, louder, and flashier times a zillion. Top it all off with a generous dose of scantily-clad booth babes and you've pretty much got the picture.

Now, historically Apple has never wanted to have anything to do with E3, since the company actively discouraged Mac games development for fear of bolstering the view that the Mac is "just a toy." Starting a few years back, however, Steve finally changed long-standing Apple policy and welcomed games developers to the Mac fold-- at least, that was the official story. Whether or not Apple is/was serious about courting games for the Mac remains a topic of much debate, with the naysayers filing Steve's "we like games" statements solidly in the "lip service" category. Certainly it didn't look good when Apple pulled out of E3 last year, citing a packed social calendar.

This year, however, Apple appears to have thrown itself back into the thick of the seizure-inducing flashing lights and ear-shattering noise: according to a MacGamer report, the company did establish at least a token presence on the show floor, "to pretty much everyone's surprise." That presence consisted of "twelve 533 MP G4 towers" with nVIDIA GeForce3 graphics acceleration and running Mac OS X. The games being demoed included the so-close-you-can-taste-it Carbon versions of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and American McGee's Alice, as well as the omnipresent Quake 3 Arena. Performance was evidently darn impressive, and we're happy to hear that Apple used this opportunity to prove that Mac OS X should turn out to be a solid gaming platform after all.

So that was Apple at E3: not an earth-shattering presence, but at least there were Macs there mixing it up. Sure, odds are that hardly anyone noticed Apple amid the hoopla surrounding some new-fangled gadget called the "Xbox," but it was still a nice gesture. Thus winds to a close this week's Apple-attended conference. As for next week, the weirdest thing happened this morning: our Alpha-Bits spelled out "WWDC MAC OS X PRELOAD" when we poured them in the bowl. We're considering it strictly a cryptic coincidence, since if life has taught us anything, it's that cereals rarely know what they're talking about, and sometime they're outright deceitful. (We've been particularly skeptical ever since our Rice Krispies kept snap-crackle-popping about an Apple-branded Palm OS PDA last year. Chattery pack of lying puffed grains...)