Okay, so just what is this MacCube thing, anyway? Everyone with a Mac and a pulse is yammering on about Apple's rumored new device, but reports about what's actually inside the box-- and who it's for-- vary more wildly than the mercurial Uncle Steve's mood swings. In that sense, we're definitely getting a "Columbus" vibe off this whole situation; remember that? One report claimed it was a set-top box that would be the centerpiece of Apple's "Golden Convergence" strategy. Another stated that it was a tiny portable device that could play DVD movies. Steve himself, when asked point-blank in public by a baffled reporter, announced that it was Apple's upcoming antigravity technology. So everyone knew "Columbus" was coming-- but no one knew it was the motherboard for the iMac, whose announcement smacked the world upside the head like a translucent blue-green two-by-four dipped in Surprise Sauce and served up with a side of "What the?!"

See the similarities? The MacCube was first reported by Mac OS Rumors to be a new enclosure for the professional-market Power Mac G4-- until Apple's lawyers allegedly told the site to yank the story. Then AppleInsider declared that it was actually a new consumer-targeted box (essentially a monitorless iMac). But according to several reports, the MacCube is stackable, which wouldn't be a terribly useful feature for most consumers... though it'd be a real boon to businesses using them as servers. Ah, but the fourteen-inches-on-a-side dimensions are a bummer, in that case, because as faithful viewer Duane Letourneau points out, wouldn't it be great to stack them side by side in a standard nineteen-inch rack space? Oh, wait, now you can-- because according to the latest AppleInsider update, the length of a side has just miraculously dropped to a svelte eight inches (now that's an effective diet!), suddenly making these cubes look more and more suited to server tasks. So basically the MacCube is a professional workstation aimed at the consumer who needs stackable servers for a rack. Sounds like a plan!

No-- wait-- sorry, we got that wrong. Faithful viewer Greg Hill notes that Spencer Katt's latest column reports that Apple's "iBox" is meant "to compete against Microsoft's upcoming x-box." So it's a game console. That fits with reports from faithful viewers Pastor Mac and Nitro, who both note that Nintendo's upcoming gaming system, code-named "Dolphin," will be PowerPC-based-- and Nintendo has decided to call it "StarCube." Suppose Apple's got a co-branding or otherwise collaborative effort going on there? Oh, but wait-- let's not forget that one rumored codename for the MacCube is "Trinity"-- and that, according to faithful viewer Bill Wilson, the company Play has its own cube called Trinity, which is a broadcast-video editing workstation. So maybe that's what Apple's going to unveil on Wednesday: a cobranded Trinity video cube with Apple industrial design. Dizzy yet?

As for the official AtAT stance on the MacCube's real identity, well, we say everyone else is wrong, wrong, wrong. Thanks to a Go2Mac article sent along by faithful viewer Steve Pissocra, we're firmly convinced that the MacCube is an Apple-branded microwave oven. Case closed.

Apple-- and especially Steve-- obviously likes surprises, right? There's that "a surprise every ninety days" directive, there's Steve's legendary "oh, and one more thing..." move at his keynote addresses, there's the fact that Apple product development is so deeply shrouded in mystery that many Apple engineers enter the testing labs and are strangely never heard from again... But what that really means is that Apple likes to give surprises; when the company's on the receiving end, it's not always the most gracious recipient. Steve just hates to be robbed of seeing the shock and delight on his followers' faces when he breaks open the new gear; hence, the leaked MacCube rumors led directly to the Great Apple Lawyer Stampede of 2000.

So let's say you're a graphics circuitry manufacturer, and several years ago you landed one sweet OEM deal: Apple Computer is using your chips in its entire product line. And over the years, for whatever reason, Apple has stuck by you, even though other companies are producing chips that might be far better suited to the Mac-using community. Now let's say that recently you've fallen on some rough times, financially speaking, and to make matters worse, those other graphics companies have finally woken up to the viability of the Mac market and are starting to court Apple's OEM attention-- with products that may or may not make your own technology look like a Lite Brite with half the pegs missing. Would this be a good time to risk Steve's wrath by spilling the beans on new Apple products, just days before Steve's planning to unveil them himself?

Probably not, but strangely enough, that's just what ATI seems to have done. According to a report at MacCentral, the company actually issued a press release saying that it "plans a surprise announcement" on Wednesday-- and then "offered details about those plans." Okay, now apart from the sheer surreality of both announcing your upcoming "surprise announcement" and then telling people what that surprise will be, we can't help but wonder whether ATI's thought this one through. Because those details that ATI just shouted from the rooftops include the fact that "on Wednesday, Apple will introduce three new systems with ATI graphic hardware on board." Suppose Steve's looking a little, uh, miffed right about now?

It gets better: if it wasn't enough that ATI spilled the beans about Apple unveiling new Macs, the company dug its grave a little deeper and announced that one of those systems would be "a new iMac with ATI's RAGE 4XL chip," and that the other two will be "Power Mac systems which will ship with RAGE 128 Pro and Radeon processors." So apparently Steve's going to give us an iMac and a couple of G4s on Wednesday. Not that the news comes as a great shock or anything, but it's still info about unannounced Apple products publicly revealed by a business partner. Or would that be "soon-to-be-former business partner"? Right about now we figure Apple's asking NVIDIA if it's any better at keeping its mouth shut...

Hey, here's a quickie for you to chew on if you need a little brain-teaser to while away the hours before the keynote: has AppleInsider discovered the Magical Fountain of Lawyer-Imperviousness? We ask only because it seems that ever since it got slapped with a lawsuit by Adobe alleging trade secret infringement in a special insider report on upcoming versions of Photoshop and ImageReady, the site's been on a virtual rumormongering rampage, lawyers be damned. Sure, it pulled the offending Adobe articles, but it turned right around and posted prerelease info on Microsoft's upcoming Mac version of Office. Okay, yeah, it pulled that, too (temporarily)-- but since then, the site's posted a blinding amount of insider Apple info, and has seemingly ignored the demands of Apple Legal that the material be removed.

Really, think about it; AppleInsider has since posted info about upcoming iMacs, details on the new mouse, reports on a new wider G4 enclosure (including sketches and photos), and-- most noteworthy of all-- enough data on the mysterious MacCube to choke an ox. Remember, when Mac OS Rumors dared to mention the Cube, Apple's lawyers ordered that it remove the info posthaste. Ditto MacInTouch, which isn't even a rumors site. Yet somehow AppleInsider just manages to keep blithely adding to its treasure trove of Cube data, despite having acknowledged that it's been receiving some unwelcome attention from the Cupertino mouthpieces.

So what are we seeing, here-- the actions of a site who's already facing a potentially disastrous Adobe suit and therefore feels it has nothing to lose? Is this AppleInsider's way of going out in a blaze of glory? Or is it simply bolder now, having witnessed the horror of the lawsuit first-hand and come away (so far) intact? Whatever it is, we're grateful for it-- and for today's update, which has new data on the Cube, the new iMacs, the new mouse, a smaller Cinema Display, new iBooks, and new Power Mac G4s. Hallelujah, it's raining rumors!