Will wonders never cease? PC Magazine has just released the results of its 16th Annual Service & Reliability Report, and Apple comes out smelling like a rose-- maybe even like a rose carrying a pizza. Check it out: Apple ranks an A+ in the Desktop category, an A for Notebooks, and an A for Servers, and is thusly plastered all over the Readers' Choice listings (both for home and for work) like a stubborn and embarrassing rash.

None of this comes as much of a surprise to us, since our own experiences with Apple's repair service have been stellar, and just last week faithful viewer Shane Burgess told us that he had shipped his PowerBook with an ailing Ethernet port to Apple at 5 PM on Tuesday and got the fixed unit back on Thursday afternoon-- and Apple had even fixed a ding in the enclosure he hadn't even mentioned. Okay, granted, the quality of Apple's phone support certainly seems to have declined a bit over the years, but it still hasn't degenerated far enough to have caused any murderous rampages in highly-populated areas by wild-eyed callers toting automatic weapons (at least, none that anyone can prove in court), so hey, how bad can it be?

No, to us the real news here is that Apple is showing up in the results of this reader survey in the first place. The grades are tabulated based solely on submitted data from PC Magazine subscribers, and the magazine "excluded any company for which [it] didn't receive at least 50 responses"-- so that means that, as of April 2003, there were at least fifty PC Magazine readers using Macs, which has our faces frozen in a comical mask of confusion and disbelief. Heck, there are apparently even more than that; "fewer than 2 percent" of desktops in the survey were Macs, but given that there were 16,851 desktop responses this year, we're talking about maybe 330 Mac-using PC Magazine subscribers. Somebody call Ripley's! Especially since Apple was "not on the charts last year because of its modest share among survey takers."

So are more PC Magazine subscribers choosing to buy Macs, or are more Mac users choosing to subscribe to PC Magazine? Our gut feeling is that the former possibility is mildly less preposterous (and a whole lot less disturbing)-- and if it's true, it's good news for Apple, because it might mean that even more PC Magazine readers will be swayed by Apple's A+ rating to give a Mac a try. Hmmm, maybe those Switch ads really did work after all. We figure this is all Ellen Feiss's doing. Somebody send that girl a subscription.

That dastardly Steve! First he gets us all hopped up on Panther by showing off new gee-whiz features like scampering windows and spinning cubes, and then he goes and kills our buzz by announcing that it's going to ship commercially "before the end of this year." As we all know, in marketingspeak, "before the end of this year" is a variable time frame stretching from December 31st all the way back to, say, December 28th-- which means that the non-developers among us are going to be waiting a looooong time before we get to play with all the new toys. Meanwhile, Apple's preview pages are like methadone to a heroin junkie-- they don't do much but hold the worst of the sickness at bay. We gotta have the real thing, people, but unfortunately it looks like we're going to be fighting off withdrawal symptoms from Steve's "free taste" all the way into the dark days of December.

Or are we? At MacRumors's suggestion, we managed to suppress the shakes long enough to check out MacBidouille's note on the subject, and Google's translation indicates that Panther might show up "much more quickly" than the end-of-the-year drop dead date. According to "a source which one can describe as reliable," barring any last-minute catastrophes, "the final version of Panther will be presented by Steve at Keynote of Apple Expo on September 16, 2003." (Interesting that Apple Expo's keynote page doesn't mention Steve at all, though it's certainly not a stretch to think he'd make the trip again.)

Now, we know what you're thinking: "What the heck is MacBidouille doing posting rumors that aren't about the G5?" Yeah, that threw us, too, but the G5 is at least mentioned in passing (in the context that early buyers will probably get the Panther upgrade for free), so at least it's not totally G5-free rumorological content and we needn't rush to the conclusion that MacBidouille's proprietors were killed in the night and replaced with sentient alien pod-things. Besides, as MacRumors points out, this info corroborates a pre-WWDC prediction of a "mid-September" release by eWEEK, whose Matt the Rothenberg is not typically way off base about this sort of thing. So if you're the optimistic type, you may want to keep $129 on hand for September 16th just in case.

If the September 16th release date does pan out, no one will be happier than us, since that would mean three fewer months of cold sweats and thinking there are bugs crawling all over our skin than we are currently anticipating. That said, we're not putting a ton of stock in the mid-September reports just yet, because if Panther is really on track for shipment in just two months' time, it doesn't seem like Steve to pad the ship date by three extra months like that. (If anything, we'd figure he'd knock a couple months off.) There's also the fact that the developer release is chock full of "To Be Implemented" placeholders, which doesn't bode well for an early commercial release. Still, even the tiniest sliver of hope helps keep the delirium at bay...

You know, there are a lot of plot threads we regret missing during those eleven weeks we were held captive by the Mole People and forced to dance for their amusement, but probably the one we most wish we had been around to cover was Apple's revised reseller contract. Again, we were too preoccupied with tapping to "The Good Ship Lollipop" while primitive shock prods jabbed us in the knees (those molefolk aren't exactly a lanky people) to get all the details, but as far as we can tell, back in March Apple slapped a new contract in front of its dealers and told them to sign it; this contract reportedly met with a fair amount of resistance from resellers, since it limited Apple's liability in case of disagreements and specifically nullified dealers' right to a jury trial in case they ever wanted to take Apple to court-- and the new terms apparently were to apply retroactively to any past disagreements.

But that's not all; we're also told that the new contract granted Apple the right to demand copies of all sorts of resellers' business data, such as sales numbers and inventory lists, and would allow Apple representatives to inspect the premises of any reseller, unannounced, at any time during normal business hours. The terms of the contract were said to last for five years-- after the expiration of the contract itself, meaning that if you cease to be an Apple reseller four years after signing this contract, a year after that Steve Jobs can still pop in and drink all your root beer.

We also hear that the contract required all resellers to wear sailor suits during business hours and greet customers in person, over the phone, and in email with the phrase "Ahoy Ye Matey," although we're a little less sure about that one.

Whatever the exact details of the contract, dozens of resellers refused to sign, and a slew of them were deauthorized by Apple in April. Among the departing were Dell (can't you just see Apple dropping in to inspect Dell's facilities?) and Target, both of whom sold iPods. But lately we've been receiving a spate of reports from Target employees who claim to have spotted new iPods and promotional materials showing up in stores, and now MacMinute confirms that, just three months after it bailed and cleared out all its stock, Target is back in the iPod biz. (MacMinute also notes that Dell had re-signed at some point, too, though after a quick check we weren't able to find any iPods in Dell's sticky morass of a web site. That doesn't necessarily mean they aren't there, though.)

So there you have it: Target is once again a place you can go to score an iPod-- 10 GB models in stores, all three available from its web site. And that's especially handy if you're already out shopping for any of the zillion other items that Target sells, such as sailor suits and Mole People repellent.