Wow, we don't think we've seen the world this cube-crazy since Rubik unleashed his Box o' Pain on the world in the early '80s. At this point we think there's little doubt that Apple is indeed crafting some kind of cubic Mac. When the whispers started as an apocryphal piece over at Mac OS Rumors, we were skeptical; when AppleInsider chimed in with details about the CubeMac, we started to take notice; and when MacInTouch charged into the fray with its own info about this regular hexahedron full of crunchewy Mac goodness, well, that's the point at which we finally had to consider it something likely to be real.

In fact, we're especially interested now that Apple's famed lawyers-on-speed are running ninety miles an hour to suppress each and every piece of CubeMac info floating around out there in Netville. All three of the aforementioned sites have reportedly heard from Apple Legal. Mac OS Rumors pulled its articles almost immediately citing "Apple's request," and now we see little reason to doubt that's what really happened. According to faithful viewer Bryan Trigg, AppleInsider now makes direct reference to "Apple's Legal department, and their lawyers, [being] all over AppleInsider since 10am Friday morning." And as noted by faithful viewer Tony Misasi, MacInTouch was the latest to taste Steve's Legal Wrath: "Preferring for the moment to use our resources for reporting rather than a legal battle, we have removed details about Apple's upcoming 'cube Mac' and other product announcements, following Apple Legal's demands." If you've always wanted to see what a Letter of Doom from Apple's lawyers looks like, MacInTouch has posted the one it received-- complete with response.

So, would Steve have let loose the hounds of litigation if all this CubeMac info was malarkey? Of course not. Unless that's just what he wants you to think... Suppose he's devious enough to concoct a total hoax product like a CubeMac, let a few details about it leak out, and then sic the lawyers on the rumors sites just to give the hoax an air of authenticity? Remember all the hubbub over "Columbus" and its supposed role as a set-top box, when in fact it turned out to be the iMac that took us all by surprise? Look, we're not necessarily saying that this CubeMac thing is a decoy scam of epic proportions, but we won't be totally surprised if whatever appears on Wednesday is something that no one is expecting. (Though if it is the cube, we won't feel disappointed.)

The Gay Blade's at it again, with another Naked Mole Rat Report that further cements our convictions that Mac the Knife is alive and well and squatting in a corner of the storeroom at MacEdition. Besides the inimitable voice, we also note the Rat's predilection for rumors about desktop publishing giants like Quark and Adobe-- a telltale Knife trait if ever we saw one. Sadly, we have to report that we share neither the Knife's partiality for creative recreational pharmaceuticals nor his penchant for juicy publishing industry gossip (well, okay, that one about Quark buying Adobe was a laugh and a half), and so his dirt about CTO Tim Gill leaving Quark leaves us cold.

But that's okay, since he also has some good stuff in there about a "top-secret project" being genetically spliced together in Apple's underground bunkers. It seems that once Mac OS X ships, we may finally see why Apple refused to sell off the Newton technologies after cancelling the project; according to the Rat, Apple's daring genetic engineers are recombining the Rosetta factor from Newton DNA into Mac OS X, which will result in either a modern operating system complete with world-class handwriting recognition, or a five-assed monkey. We're betting on the former.

For those of you who are wondering just why in heaven's name Apple would be stuffing an elegant PDA input method into what is decidedly a desktop operating system, don't forget about PowerBooks. The Rat claims that Apple's "next-generation" pro portable due out next year will sport a nifty trackpad capable of accepting stylus input, thus bringing Newton-style HWR to the PowerBook. Clearly this will "do to the keyboard what the iMac did to the old-school floppy disk," because obviously it's much quicker to write something on a little rectangle of plastic than it is to type it on a full-size scissor-action keyboard.

In related news, unimpeachable sources now tell us that Apple's long-awaited PDA is indeed slated to make an appearance at the Expo keynote this Wednesday. The hold up was apparently that Apple decided that handwriting recognition, while an excellent input method for a computer with a full keyboard attached, was not a suitable technology for a handheld computer. That's why Apple's PDA will instead rely upon Morse code as its text-entry protocol; characters are entered by tapping the whole unit against a hard surface in rhythmic bursts. As for why Apple decided to make people learn Morse instead of retaining the Newton's hassle-free HWR, apparently marketing research shows that Boy Scouts, naval officers, and grizzled Wild West telegraph operators are vast untapped markets in the PDA space; plus, people were willing to learn Graffiti, with its dozens of glyphs, so Morse should be a cakewalk since it only has two characters to learn. We think Apple's got a winner here!

Tomorrow's the big day-- no, not that big day, the other one. Sure, Steve's not stepping up to the mic until Wednesday, but tomorrow Apple's Chief Money Dude Fred Anderson gets to strut his stuff in his quarterly live conference call with the analysts of Wall Street. Now, if you're sitting there stewing in regret that you pursued a career in the basket-weaving profession instead of donning a thousand-dollar suit and watching stocks rise and fall for a living, relax-- the 'net has broken down the barriers of class and career alike, and that means you can listen in on that fateful call yourself. All you need is QuickTime 4 and an Internet connection, the presence of mind to tune in to smilin' Fred's face at 5PM EDT, and voilà; you'll be sharing the line with people who spend more on bottled water and designer capuccino every day than you earn in a week. Ain't technology grand?

As for what we'll hear from good ol' Fred, hey, that's anybody's guess-- but a few of the more knowledgeable pundits are voicing their two cents' worth. The Motley Fool seems positive overall, predicting that Apple will "meet or exceed Wall Street's consensus earnings estimate" despite "soft" revenue growth due to the falloff of iMac sales. That's because the Fool thinks Apple's "improved gross margins" will make up for the iMac shortfall. Sounds good to us. And the ever-insightful Eric Yang over at AAPL Investors concurs; lower revenue, but earnings that meet or beat the estimates-- and he backs it all up with honest-to-goodness numbers. Sounds like Apple's going to have another solid quarter under its belt.

Don't forget, this is your very last chance to register your guess in the Beat The Analysts contest and see if you've got what it takes to show those hoity-toity Wall Street types that they ain't so tough. So research Apple's past performance, build complex mathematical predictive models using advanced economics and chaos theory, and then guess that Apple's Q3 profit will miraculously equal your social security number. You could win fame and fortune-- or, at least a mention on AtAT and a cheesy prize from the Baffling Vault of Antiquity™. You have until 10 PM EDT tonight to enter Sadly, the AtAT crew will miss the conference call tomorrow, since we'll be on a train to the Big Apple at the time, but we'll get caught up once we make it to the hotel-- and the results will be posted shortly thereafter. Now get guessin'!