You friendly neighborhood AtAT staff just loves this time of year; the nip in the air (though it's a freakish 72° here in Boston), the specials on TV, the impending time off of work, and-- most importantly of all-- the holiday shopping. No, that's not a facetious remark; we leap into the consumer fray with a zeal rarely seen since the battle-lust of the Visigoths as they sacked Rome in the fifth century. Face it; what other time of year is it expected-- nay, demanded-- that you spend with reckless abandon in a futile attempt to buy the approval of your family and loved ones with material objects wrapped in shiny paper? It's truly a wondrous process to behold. Any excuse to whip out the credit cards and single-handedly bolster the U.S. economy is fine by us. (Not that we're going to get you anything, so quit hinting.)

So the big question this year is, what are you going to get for that special Mac maven in your life? The one whom you're determined to win over with an extravagant display of overspending? Oh, sure, you could get him or her an iMac; they're cute, cuddly, fun, and only $29.99 a month. (Nothing says love like five years of payments-- and you don't have to spend a dime until April. Vive La Dette!) But isn't that just a little too obvious a gift? Wouldn't you rather get something sexier than cute? Black instead of Bondi? Sleek and svelte instead of round and cuddly?

Well, good news-- Apple's dropped the prices on PowerBook G3s just in time for the holidays. According to O'Grady's PowerPage, you can now pick up one of those duo-textured Stealth laptops for as little as $2499-- even less, at specific resellers like Cyberian Outpost. The new pricing reflects price cuts of between $300 and $600, depending on the particular model; go ahead, max out that plastic. By the way, if you're looking for something to get us as a thank you for churning out this show day after day, we like the 300 MHz model with DVD.

And the big question on everyone's lips is, what's Apple getting for us this year? After all, who kept the faith when everyone else was jumping ship and saying Apple was going down the toilet? Why, the fiercely loyal Mac installed base, of course. And not to sound grabby or anything, but hey-- doesn't bleeding six colors during the Amelio Dynasty count for something?

Well, hold out your stockings, boys and girls, because Christmas comes early this year. If you shelled out the $99 for Mac OS 8.5, you may have noticed that while it's a great upgrade, there are some problems with it; Sherlock has trouble working through certain firewalls, for example, and AppleScript leaks a little RAM here and there. Plus, some ADB dongles didn't work right under Mac OS 8.5, and of course there's that little matter of massive hard disk corruption that appeared under certain unusual circumstances. Not to worry-- Apple's made amends, and stuffed our stockings with Mac OS 8.5.1, which fixes all kinds of little glitches. Download the 3 MB of holiday cheer right now from Apple's servers.

Granted, getting a free software upgrade that fixes problems that shouldn't have existed in the first place isn't the world's most exciting present, but what did you expect-- a free iMac and vegan cookies baked by Steve Jobs himself? (Maybe next year.) And anyway, getting these bug fixes now is a lot more pleasant than having to sit around and wait for Mac OS 8.6, right? Share and Enjoy.

Okay, forget 1998-- what do you want next Christmas? It's never too early to start dropping hints, you know, and if you write letters to Santa, we hear he looks smilingly on punctuality. Also, if you were more naughty than nice this year, you're going to want to make some serious New Year's resolutions in a few weeks, because the payoff could be huge if you can top Santa's "Nice" list in 1999. Mac OS Rumors has early details on next year's "Sawtooth" Macs-- the successors to the "Yosemite" machines due to debut next month at Macworld Expo-- and the initial specs are enough to make any self-respecting Mac fanatic drool like one of Pavlov's pooches when the dinner bell rings.

Here's a quick rundown of the more drool-worthy features... forget the G3, because the Sawtooth will use G4 processors running between 400 and 950 MHz on a 100 MHz or faster system bus. Since the G4 doesn't have the multiprocessing limitations of the G3, there will be multiprocessor Sawtooth boxes for those of you who need truly awe-inspiring power. Sawtooth will hold up to 2 GB of RAM and will use an even smaller hardware ROM than the iMac and Yosemite-- 512 KB down from 1 MB, meaning that just about all of the Mac OS will be loaded into RAM from the hard disk. And unless something better comes along, Sawtooth with use the same ATI RAGE 128 graphics processor used in Yosemite, but instead of residing on a 66 MHz PCI card, it'll come in the form of a 4x AGP card for better performance.

Then there are all the little goodies like gigabit Ethernet, DVD-RAM drives, something called a "Screamer" audio system, etc. Plus, remember that Mac OS X should be shipping by the time these puppies hit the shelves, so the innate speed of the PowerPC won't be hobbled by legacy system software. How'd you like to find one of those under the tree next year? "Dear Santa..."