Cupertino, we have a problem: apparently there's nothing for any of us to buy. Well, okay, that's clearly an exaggeration, but there's more than a grain of truth to it; for one thing, Apple itself has stopped taking orders for iMacs citing lack of inventory until the new models ship in September. And Power Macs? Well, the low-end and mid-range configs are showing ship dates of "3-5 business days" at the Apple Store, but the dual-2.5 GHz model (you know, the one that's actually faster since eleven months ago) only says "July," which is just vague enough to be suspicious. And given the iMac drought, AppleInsider reports that demand for eMacs has understandably skyrocketed to a level "far exceeding available inventory," putting them in "extremely limited supply." So the choices for a desktop Mac are quickly dwindling to slim pickin's indeed.

How about on the music front? Well, everybody knows that miniPods ("4 weeks" lead time at the Apple Store) are still tougher to spot on store shelves than neckties at a nudist colony, but now AI claims that supplies of the 15 GB "vanilla" iPod are starting to run dry as well, possibly in readiness for the launch of fourth-generation devices in September. Displays? The shortest lead time on Apple's swanky new aluminum-clad offerings is "2-4 weeks," with the 30-inch models bleeding over into "August." After taking one of those perspective-clearing "steps back," it's starting to look like the shelves are awfully bare right now. It's not much of a cheese shop, is it?

Ah, but we haven't mentioned laptops-- which are "said to be in good supply." So good supply, in fact, that, since Apple has practically nothing else to sell anyone for the next several weeks, the company has reportedly taken to calling "customers who had logged into the store with an Apple ID, configured a laptop order in their shopping cart, but did not proceed to checkout" to ask them one vital question: "What, are you chicken?"

In other words, if you were serious enough about getting a new PowerBook that you'd actually gotten so far as to have put one in your virtual cart, Apple isn't above getting on the horn and trying to nudge you over the edge into exciting new depths of rampant credit card debt. Apparently Apple has a number of unspecified "special deals" with which it's been trying to lure fence-sitters into finally taking the plunge; we're tempted to throw a 17-incher into the cart and wait for the phone call just to hear the details... but no, we suppose that'd be cruel, building their hopes up like that. Poor lil' fellas.

For the record, we've actually heard reports of Apple phoning up people with full carts or who had used the Apple Store's "Save for later" function pretty much ever since the store first went live almost seven years ago, but the timing here (and the laptop focus of these hard-sell tactics) just struck us as interesting. Here's hoping that Apple manages to limp past this "major product supply gap" without getting too desperate, because there's nothing sadder than a computer company having to go all Donner Party or something just to survive. Hang in there, people-- September's a-comin'!

Huh, well, this is sort of embarrassing; have you been a bit puzzled by our complete and utter lack of pre-Expo slavering speculation in advance of the show kicking off next week? Perhaps you simply chalked it up to the harsh reality that, without Apple in attendance, the odds of any big Mac announcements are looking a little on the peaked side. Or maybe you just figured that we've matured substantially over the course of the past several months and so we're too cultivated to indulge in such petty and juvenile antiiiiimmmmmpphhWAAA HA HA HA HA HAAAA!! Hee hee (sniffle) sorry, we really thought we might be able to pull that one off with a straight face. Ahhh, good times.

But see, the truth is that we kindasorta just plumb forgot all about it. Really! The notion that the show starts in just a few days' time struck us as a complete surprise today, and we're already scrambling (well, in the loosest sense of the word) to scrape together a few hours next week to go check out the show floor, such as it might turn out to be. Like we said, Apple won't be there, so the general excitement factor is registering at about a 2.2 on the Schiller scale. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular metric, a 10 generally accompanies a real Stevenote following press leaks about a completely new product line, while a 1 indicates the level of excitement appropriate for, say, finding a 10-cents-off coupon for a brand of gum you never chew.

A 2.2 is roughly equivalent to the sort of excitement that comes from getting to peel the adhesive cover off the holes of a new disposable salt shaker at a table in Denny's.

That said, we have to admit that we're impressed with IDG World Expo's hustle; we just checked out the official Expo exhibitor list, and it's a lot less anemic-looking than it was as late as four short weeks ago. IDG had only signed 29 companies in mid-April, and there were 40 signed up as of the beginning of last month, but now there are 69, including a couple new heavy hitters-- Microsoft and MYOB, as touted in last week's IDG press release. It appears that the "Expo" part of the "Conference & Expo" might not be a total waste of space after all.

But don't get all giggly for a happy ending just yet, because Think Secret reveals that "Microsoft and MYOB were given booth space for free just so their names could be added to an exhibitor list that's light on big developers." (One assumes that IDG made a similar offer to Apple, and Apple still wouldn't come.) Meanwhile, morale among the vendors sounds like it could use a little bit of a boost: "already Boston Expo exhibitors are talking like they will never exhibit at a future Boston show, if there is a show next year. Two exhibitors Think Secret spoke with said they have already been told by IDG World Expo that next week's show will not make a profit." So if there is going to be a Cinderella story, this may be the last chance ever.

Not that we actually expect Apple to come swooping in on a big white horse or anything, you understand; for one thing, as we mentioned a month ago, Apple is gearing up to be an exhibitor at DV Expo, instead, most likely because it feels some sort of homing instinct to return to Javits every summer, sort of like those swallows coming back to Capistrano. But mostly we're not optimistic because we've always suspected that Apple's whole "we hate Boston" spiel was never more than a ploy to extricate itself from the obligation of spending all that cash on exhibiting at two domestic Expos a year; if it can kill the show outright, Apple gets to back out without looking like a cheapskate.

We could well be wrong, of course, and if we spot any glass slippers on the show floor next week, we'll be sure to give you a holler...

So what's with the Apple Store UK? We only ask because faithful viewer David Poves pointed out a surprising pricing choice as dutifully documented by The Register, complete with screenshot: while most of the store's language skills software carries a fairly reasonable price tag ("Talk Now French" is reportedly £24.01, while "World Talk German" is £29), the software known as "World Talk English" cost a seemingly steep £117,498.83, or approximately $218,126.05. That had better be some darn good software. For that price, we'd expect the ghost of David Niven to float around everywhere we went to translate for us.

Now, normally this sort of glitch (at least, we assume it's a glitch) wouldn't warrant more than a passing mention along the lines of "tee hee, Apple's web guys messed up a price, it is to laugh, chortle chortle." But when we went looking for "World Talk English" to make sure that Apple had since corrected the error, we found no entry for "World Talk English" at all, as if Apple had pulled it completely as the safest method of ensuring that the problem got fixed. A bit overzealous in our opinion, but okay, fine. The weird bit, though, is that we noticed that a different language software title-- "Ultralingua Dictionary French/German"-- also carries a £117,498.83 price tag. Whether it did before and The Reg just didn't notice or if the Phantom Absurd Price is magically leaping from language product to language product we simply can't say, but we will say this: wow, everything really is more expensive in the UK.

Well, actually, not everything. About a week ago, after Apple pulled its "we screwed up our inventory, so you don't get to buy any iMacs" strangeness, faithful viewer Basil noted that iMacs at the Apple Store UK had a listed price of -£1.18. That's negative one pound eighteen pence, which more than makes up for the exorbitant price of a couple of the Apple Store UK's language software titles. In fact, if all these prices had been in effect at once, it would have been possible to order 99,575 iMacs and a single copy of "World Talk English" for the princely sum of exactly 33 pence.

Why do we get the feeling that, before long, there's going to be a "changing of the guard" down Apple Store UK way? Meanwhile, we feel sorry for any poor saps who actually ordered "World Talk English" from the Apple Store UK for the equivalent of $218,126.05; Best Buy had it last week for $218,117.99. It really does pay to keep those eyes peeled for bargains.