T minus three weeks and counting before the official kick-off to this summer's Macworld Expo-- and we, for one (er, two), are getting antsy. Everyone knows that in the weeks leading up to a big event like this one, most real activity in the Apple world drops off to a near coma state as we sail into the calm before the storm. Actual news gets scarce, while speculation mounts on all sorts of topics and the questions fly fast and furious: "What will the new iMac look like?" "Will there be a larger-screen iBook?" "Is this finally the year for an Apple handheld or a buyout by Disney?" And, most importantly of all, "Who will deliver the opening keynote?"

Oh, you thought the answer to that last one was a given, huh? Not so, grasshopper-- at least, not to those of us with generally nervous constitutions. Why, it was only a few years ago that Steve pulled out of his originally scheduled live New York Expo keynote appearance, instead opting to do his thang via satellite. As it turned out, he showed up live and in person anyway, much to the delight of everyone present, but still, that was enough of a close call that we don't take these things for granted anymore. And we had become increasingly nervous over the course of the past few weeks when the official Macworld Expo site continued to omit any mention of His Steveness from the keynote page, instead listing only some Microsoft "feature presentation" in which we have zero interest whatsoever.

However, now we can finally exhale; as reported by MacCentral, Steve is now officially in the lineup, and barring a zany madcap mixup at the airport the night before the gig involving Steve's possession of a suspicious white powder and culminating in a high-speed police chase across state lines complete with deadly gunplay, he should show up as scheduled to wow us with shiny new gear. Color us relieved that we'll get to perform our standard Expo ritual in three weeks: we'll get up obscenely early, wait in line at the Javits Center for three hours, file into the conference hall, grab a couple of seats as close to the front as possible, and then bask in the life-giving glow of Reality Distortion Field energy flowing undiminished from its cosmic source. Tastes just like Kool-Aid!

Given how relatively quiet things are in the world of Apple right about now, we figured we'd try our hand at a little fortune-telling of our own. While we've had good luck in the past listening to singing birdies and reading cryptic messages in our Alpha-Bits, those were uninstigated and unprovoked instances of divinely-given knowledge of the future. This time around, we decided to take an active role instead and put on our soothsayer hats for a little wild prognosticatin' action, in hopes of conjuring forth some info related to one of Apple's non-consumer-desktop product lines. (After all, there's only so much "LCD iMac" speculation in which one can engage before one's head caves in and catches fire from the inside.)

So, armed with a copy of Soothsaying For Dummies, we chanted from Apple's boilerplate Software License Agreement and cast our goat entrails upon the base earth. (Actually, it was VegiViscera™ brand vegan soy-based goat entrail substitute-- which we heartily recommend over "I Can't Believe It's Not Goat Entrails!™", which we've found to be less than satisfactory when used for hieroscopy; too rubbery. Plus it's got a harsh soy aftertaste.) While we're still pretty new to the whole "reading the future in guts" gig, we think we saw something about the Power Mac G4/733-- moving to the bottom of the Pro Desktop food chain. In other words, these here veggie guts seem to be implying that Apple's entry level Power Mac will run at 733 MHz in just three weeks' time.

Skeptical? So are we, but what can we say? That's what we're seeing. And we're even more suspicious at what we saw next: that the Power Mac line would actually top out at over 1 GHz at the high end. Can it be possible? Can Motorola actually have broken through the gigahertz ceiling that has taunted it for years? If you're the optimistic type, you may want to get your brain set for some seriously zippy Power Macs, because that's exactly what Steve's got up his baggy sleeves (at least, according to the finest simulated animal guts yet available on the open market).

This whole scenario sounded a mite familiar, so we went poking around in our Reruns, and whaddaya know-- Mac OS Rumors actually predicted the same general thing back in March; whether that makes the whole thing more or less believable is entirely up to you. (We should note that that illustrious site also predicted a WWDC intro of dual-processor 667 and 733 MHz Macs at the same time, but heck, who bats 1000 these days?) Lastly, we should mention that this is unsubstantiated prognostication and shouldn't in the least affect any existing plans you may have had to run right out and slap down some cash for a new Power Mac. Then again, if you're the type of person who plans to buy a new Mac less than three weeks before an Expo Stevenote, you've got bigger problems than believing what some soy-based goat entrails tell you...

Some die-hard Mac traditionalists may not be thrilled about how Mac OS X is based on UNIX; heck, it even includes a command line for intrepid nerds and lovers of irony. And while Apple's doing an impressive job of shielding "regular people" from the scarier aspects of the UNIX experience, rather than being embarrassed at the thirty-year-old underpinnings of its brand-new operating system (as some people feel it should be), the company is practically revelling in the fact. (Personally, we at AtAT were UNIX geeks long before we were Mac geeks, so we're loving it.)

Faithful viewer StephBrown tipped us off to the latest sign that Apple is evidently serious about supporting the UNIXy roots (nerd pun unintended) of its new OS: according to a CNET article, the company has just hired Jordan Hubbard, one of the co-founders of FreeBSD that's spent most of the past decade evangelizing and supporting the open source version of UNIX from which Apple's own open source Darwin core is derived. This is big, because the very fact that Jordan's going to be working on Mac OS X may lend the platform some welcome respect and serious consideration among the hardcore UNIX geeks out there.

Certainly the man's recent post to the FreeBSD mailing list may draw some attention from an audience who might otherwise never have given the Mac a second thought. In his own words, "OS X has finally managed to achieve what's been something of a holy grail for the Unix community-- take a powerful Unix core (BSD) and mate it with a usable desktop, GUI development tools and some real applications, all without sacrificing access to the underlying features of Unix... proving that [Apple is] more than willing to appeal to the techies out there as well as the general consumer who may never get past the desktop."

If you're itching to think in stereotypes, look at it like this: the Mac has long been the bastion of creative, arty types who generally aren't extremely technical because they haven't needed to be; the Mac just works. Now, what would happen if Mac OS X attracts a steady influx of serious tech-heavy nerds as well, who can appreciate the platform from a geek's perspective? Well, aside from massive culture shock and the premise for a really bad sitcom, we'd say we're looking at a user base comprising the best of both worlds driving the platform forward-- and helping Apple to improve it continuously until everyone realizes it's the best choice for the average shmoe, too. Can't beat that. Bring it on!