The Macintosh Conspiracy had a nice article that made some pretty accurate guesses as to what the new Apple ads are like. It predicted that since the ads were being aired during Toy Story, they most likely would focus on Apple's educational offerings, or the general strengths of the Apple brand, rather than any technical issues like Rhapsody. (They were right.) It also figured that since the ads were being put together in a few days by a small filming company, the ads would be light on special effects. (They were right again.) There's a lesson in there for you all-- The Conspiracy is always right. ;-)

The article goes on to suggest that future Apple ads should be made by Pixar. While AtAT feels this would be a great thing, it might be too obvious a conflict of interest ever to happen. But we can always hope.

Anyway, it's time to vote on the new ad in the AtAT Online Survey! Take a minute to let us know what you think about Apple Marketing's new direction. We'll leave the polls open for a week, at which point we'll tally up the results and post them for all to see. (Depending on how this works out, we may be posting cumulative results each night throughout the week.)

BTW, thanx to MacMadness for pointing us to this article, and for adding us to their list of Mac sites. (And we share the Macintosh Conspiracy's puzzlement over why Mac sites on Sunday seem deader than Ted Lange's career. What's up with that?)

There is a very interesting story posted over at Apple Recon. It speculates on the manner in which POWERtools may be legally shipping those non-Apple-certified G3 boxes tomorrow. Cleverly, it appears that POWERtools (and one other cloner, according to RFI) may simply be buying Newer Technology's MAXpower Pro upgrade cards and installing them into their existing Apple-certified 604e boxes! Simple. Elegant. Kinda sneaky. We dig it. ;-)

Apple Recon goes on to guess about the rumors that some clonemakers are going to ship "clandestine" non-Apple-certified CHRP boxes. Since Mac OS 8.1 (due in a couple of months) is widely rumored to be "ROMless," cloners could simply ship their uncertified CHRP designs, bundled with a boxed retail copy of Mac OS 8.1. Apparently this would be perfectly legal, albeit antagonistic towards Apple (but since when is that news?).

Lastly, the article speculates that the Apple-branded G3 boxes (first expected in early '98, then in 90 days, then in November) might appear as early as next week (though they later amend this to the more conservative and widely-reported November timeframe)! RFI bases this guess on the previously-reported dearth of 9600/350's, which they think indicates that Apple may have received a "windfall" of PPC 750's and may be working hard to rush the 9600/350's successor onto the market. Man, we love speculation!

Macinsider has an article by an anonymous attendee of the internal Apple dealer meeting last Friday. We think it's worth reading, because it may reaffirm people's faith in Apple's support of the dealer channel. Choice quote: "if there was any doubt before, there is none now. Steve Jobs is absolutely, positively busting his butt to get Apple back to being the great company it once was."

This is an important point, because in the past couple of weeks, there have been many rumors that Apple was cutting 95% of its dealers loose in order to move almost exclusively to a direct selling model, similar to how Power Computing sold machines directly to its customers via phone orders. There was widespread panic among some of the dealers (who believed their businesses were in jeopardy), which now appears to have been totally uncalled for. Oopsie!

AtAT sends out hearty thanx to all of our faithful viewers who helped make our first week such a success! Special thanx go out to MacNN, MacCentral, MacMadness, and MacSurfer for linking to us and helping spread the word. And of course, extra-special thanx to our sponsor, Small Dog Electronics, for making this site possible.

We'd also like to thank our parents, the producers, the caterers, the Academy, several major and minor deities of multiple faiths, and Cuba Gooding Jr. Whoops, here comes the music-- we're about to get cut