The Stevenote is on the launch pad; repeat, the Stevenote is on the launch pad. T-minus five days and counting, and speculation readings are off the charts. Will there finally be new PowerBooks launching in Paris? Only ground control knows for sure, but that hasn't stopped everybody and his crazy Aunt Lois from asking that very question. Indeed, we're still asking that question, along with a slew of others: If there are new PowerBooks on Tuesday, will they be available immediately, or will we have to wait a few weeks or months before the first units dribble off the production lines? In addition to the inevitable faster G4s and bigger disks, will all three models get backlit keyboards? If they do show up in Paris, will you buy us one? Was our French teacher smoking something when she insisted that the French term for a hot ham and cheese sandwich could arguably be interpreted as "mangled-up dead guy"?

Oh, and is it time for lunch yet?

Well, although we've found precious little speculation in the Mac media about potential chemical "enhancements" of Mme. Grenier's state of mind (names changed to protect the odd), as far as we can make out, at least most prognosticators now have their feet planted firmly in the "PowerBooks on Tuesday" camp. A new article at AppleInsider claims that Apple has actually told certain "select retail partners" that they'd be getting new PowerBooks in "early- to mid-September," and confirms MacBidouille's recent rumor that Motorola had finally managed to scrape together 50,000 7457-class G4 processors and kick 'em over to Apple. (Interestingly, Moto's reportedly losing $125 per chip, or $6.25 million, because of some guaranteed price arrangement. Ouch. Well, another couple of hundred pink slips ought to clear that right up.) AppleInsider is now on-record as having "positively confirmed" that at the very least the 15-inch PowerBook will be reborn on Tuesday, and the 12- and 17-inchers will probably get a little gussied up as well.

Likewise, Mac OS Rumors has reiterated its belief that new PowerBooks are indeed topping the entrées list on the Stevenote menu, and also tosses in the possibility that new displays might be served up as a garnish. As far as we can tell, at this point the only people not expecting PowerBooks on Tuesday are the folks at the PowerPage, so if they wind up being correct and Steve goes 'Bookless, you just know they're going to be doing an elaborate "We Told You So" dance number with Vegas showgirls and a white tiger and a guy in a gorilla suit getting shot out of a cannon during the big finale. (We sense a Tony in the offing!)

So that's where things stand right now: the consensus says PowerBooks on Tuesday, while a spunky minority still says nay. And while we value both our fierce underdog mystique and any chance to do high kicks and jazz hands while wearing lamé, this time we're going to go all mainstream with the guesswork: we figure we will see new aluminum wonders next week. Not that we have anything to go on except our gut feeling, of course, but our shiny gold top hat and tails are at the cleaners.

Ha! Publishing justice! As you all know, Apple bailed on the creative community at Seybold this year, preferring instead, of all things, to rub elbows with enterprise shmoes at OracleWorld. Yes, Apple snubbed the very publishing professionals who kept it alive over the years through thick and thin to go hobnob with suits who never gave it the time of day-- and now karma has come right back to bite it in the kiester. Faithful viewer Jonathan Claydon notes that, according to eWEEK, Apple and every other OracleWorld exhibitor and attendee had to evacuate the Moscone Center yesterday after some dorkus malorkus phoned in a bomb threat. See? That's what the universe does to people who turn their backs on their friends. Apple could have been cozied up all warm and unevacuaty at a booth at Seybold, but noooooo, it just had to try to play with the enterprise crowd. Serves 'em right.

Wait, what's that? Seybold was taking place in Moscone at the same time? Oh, yeah. Um... okay, never mind about all that "karma" stuff; both shows got cleared out, so apparently Apple would have been sent out into the street either way. Granted, since Seybold was in the west wing, at least Apple could have stayed put a half-hour longer, but we're not convinced that's a very strong hint from the cosmic wheel of divine justice that the company should have stuck with Seybold over OracleWorld. If anything, the universe was telling Apple that it shouldn't have been at either show yesterday. Maybe the company was cosmically meant to be at the International Council of Shopping Centers instead.

As usual with these things, there was no bomb, but the evacuation cancelled both Seybold and OracleWorld events for the rest of the day-- including the keynote address of Ken Jacobs, Oracle's veep of product strategy for server technologies, who was, coincidentally enough, just about to go on when the evacuation order came down. Are we overly suspicious to wonder whether Ken might have needed another night to write his speech, and whether he had an assistant willing to "buy him some more time"? Well, yeah, probably. But it's not like we're going to change now.

And by the way, a bomb scare? Seriously, in addition to being in awfully bad taste (on the eve of 9/11, to boot), those things are so played out; we used to have one a week in grade school, fer cryin' out loud. You'd think by now someone looking to disrupt a couple of tech trade shows would have come up with something slightly less offensive and a whole lot less dull. Why don't we ever hear about, say, pudding scares? As in, "You'd better evacuate the building, because in one hour's time, this entire convention center will be completely pumped full of rich, creamy JELL-O pudding"? The threat could even be delivered in a Bill Cosby voice for added believability. Just a little creativity, people; that's all we're asking for, here. Keep that in mind the next time you're planning to disrupt people's lives with irresponsibly alarmist anonymous phone calls, okay?

We're a little short-staffed down here at the AtAT compound this week, and frankly, the manpower shortage is taking its toll; we just spent an hour trying to think of that word which means "catlike" before we finally realized that the word we were looking for was, well, "catlike." After that we spent half an hour trying to remember why we needed it in the first place. And then we blacked out for twenty minutes. Something tells us that we're not winning the Society for Profound and Blinding Efficiency Award anytime soon-- but then again, it's not like we'd ever have time to dust it anyway, so screw 'em.

Anyway, given our fatigue level and our need to finish production of this episode sometime before the earth is overrun with large feral catlike (a-ha!) things evolved from the modern-day Turkish Angora, we're taking the "fish in a barrel" approach and harping on the latest Microsoft security holes. Faithful viewer zman tipped us off to an Associated Press article about Redmond admitting the presence of still more "serious new flaws" in Windows-- but this time there's even more of a sense of déjà vu than usual. It seems that security experts have characterized the new holes as "nearly identical" to the one that led to all that Blaster fun last month; "they're as close as you can be without being the same," according to Marc Maiffret of eEye Digital Security.

Unfortunately, though, they aren't the same, which means Microsoft is once again urging customers "to immediately apply a free repairing patch" to plug the holes. (Because, as we all know, that approach worked so freakin' well the last eighty times it's tried it.) Still, there's no problem, claimed Microsoft Senior Security Strategist Phil Reitinger as he briefed Congress on what his company was doing to improve security in its products. We can only assume that Phil didn't talk for very long. He did, however, make the very reassuring assertion that "there is no such thing as completely secure software." (Oh, yeah, buddy? Well, I've got a HelloWorld.c right here that says otherwise! So there!)

Quick side note: does anyone else find it noteworthy that Microsoft's security bigwig used to work for the very same Justice Department that successfully nailed the company for antitrust violations and then mysteriously caved like a Twinkie with the cream filling sucked out during settlement talks? Verrrrry interesting.

Anyway, back to them thar flaws. The bottom for us, of course, is that as Mac users, pretty much the only thing we need to prepare ourselves for is yet another onslaught of stories about how the SonOfBlaster worm is costing the world umpteen billion dollars in lost productivity. Gee, now which monstrously enormous corporation whose sievelike products are responsible for all this damage in the first place just happens to have umpteen billion dollars in the bank, just sitting there when it could be used to make reparations? Don't tell us-- another hour and a half and we'll remember...