Color us incensed! There was a time when attending the East Coast Macworld Expo every year was a no-brainer for your friendly AtAT staff, since it was held mere miles from our headquarters in Boston. Last year, though, Apple threw us a curve by moving the Expo to New York City, necessitating a week-long road trip to the Big Apple in the AtATmobile. It was a nice change of pace-- in addition to the odd luxury of attending an Expo that was held entirely within one convention center (instead of frequently catching shuttle buses between Boston's Bayside Expo Center and the World Trade Center), we were free to spend some time doing the tourist thing during non-Expo hours. We got to hit some museums, take in a Broadway show, visit the Empire State Building, and hear a pre-recorded Adam West advise us to buckle up inside a taxi cab. All in all, it was a fun and positive experience.

But it was also an expensive experience, and judging by the grumbling we heard on the show floor by both attendees and exhibitors alike, we have to assume that it was expensive for everybody. The hotels were pricey, the food was pricey, and half the time we were sure somebody was going to charge us for breathing the air. For us, a Boston Expo also holds the purely selfish benefit of allowing us to go back to our own homes at the end of the day, eat our own non-pricey food, and sleep in our own non-pricey beds. So yes, we were thrilled to find out that at least for 1999, the Expo was moving back to Boston, and yes, now we're a little miffed to hear that Apple's pushing hard to move it back to New York instead. MacWEEK broke the rumor first, we believe, but just about every Mac site picked up on it quickly; apparently nothing's yet final, but according to MacCentral, IDG Expos is indeed considering the move back to NYC, despite last year's less-than-compelling attendance numbers and the sight of penniless conference-goers begging for bus fare home outside the Javitz Center. And rumor has it that IDG is being pressured to make the move by none other than Steve Jobs.

So if Boston yields more and happier attendees, why is Steve pushing so hard for New York? Sure, the official story is that New York better matches the markets that Apple is pursuing, and the Javitz Center allows the whole convention to be under one roof, but our personal theory is that Steve's got a favorite vegan restaurant in the Big Apple-- perhaps Han Gawi, or Zen Palate. If that's the case, may we humbly recommend that Steve try Boston's own Buddha's Delight on Beach Street, only perhaps a fifteen minute walk from the World Trade Center? Sure, it may not be as fancy-schmancy as Han Gawi, and you might get better service in a war zone, but the food is all vegan and can't be beat. Heck, Steve, if you're watching, we'll even take you there, our treat. The number 13 special will kick your ass, believe us...

So the rest of the Mac news world is poring over Apple's SEC 10-Q report for the first fiscal quarter, looking to dig up fun little tidbits about our favorite computer company and its financial status. This is the quarterly report that Apple must file which includes all kinds of money-themed details and usually a bit of pessimistic forecasting regarding the company's future performance. MacCentral has a nice breakdown, which captures all the juicy facts a typical Mac newshound would want to know about net sales, volume growth, gross margins, the sale of ARM stock, and the Y2K problem.

We, on the other hand, are much more interested in the Chinese introduction of the new blue and white G3's (the Computer Formerly Known As Yosemite), primarily because when you get right down to it, our attention span for financial data would fit into a shotglass with our interest in professional football and our patience for anything involving the Olsen twins, and there'd still be room left over for two olives and a maraschino cherry. Plus, the Chinese G3 intro included one certain element that's guaranteed to hold our attention-- namely, a chainsaw. We are not kidding. According to the Mac Observer, Apple China staged what sounds like a truly bizarre event involving a "20 year old computer maniac buying Pentium machines" when the image of HAL 9000 "with an Einstein face" in the red lens appeared and asked said maniac "how bad he felt not buying the most beautiful and powerful computer." At which point all hell broke loose as the maniac proceeded to destroy a stage-full of Pentium machines with a baseball bat and a chainsaw. As if that weren't crazy enough, the destruction then became an audience-participation event.

Oh, to have been one of the five lucky audience members who were then invited on stage to join in the carnage... Ever since seeing Evil Dead 2 we've harbored secret fantasies of duct-taping a chainsaw onto a bloody wrist stump and taking on the forces of evil. This mental image of an Einstein-possessed HAL 9000 urging a young computer maniac to rip a pack of Wintels to shreds isn't just insane, it's downright cinematic. Horror films are hot again right now, so is there any doubt that Apple will sell the film rights soon? Perhaps to Pixar? But somehow we doubt that a computer-rendered slasher flick would generate enough "oomph." Maybe Apple will get New Line to produce it, with James Van Der Beek cast in the role of "computer maniac" and Nicholas Cage as Einstein-HAL. It's a sure money-maker.

Okay, about this whole mammals.org thing: we're still puzzled. We don't know why mammals.org is mapped to Apple's home page. We also don't know why the mammals.org domain name is actually registered in Apple's name. We simply don't see how it fits in with Apple's secret plans for global domination. On the plus side, many, many faithful viewers wrote in with observations and/or suggestions, some of which are excerpted below. Can you put the pieces of the puzzle together?

• The ecological spin: Brian Frey: One coworker remarked on the Non-Profit domain registration of ".org", which led to another coworker's speculation that Apple's planning a "Buy a Mac, save a whale" promotion...
• The evolutionary spin: John R. Nash: Microsoft = big, lumbering dinosaurs. Apple = mammals, waiting in the wings to take over. DOJ = big comet hurtling towards the status quo... Any questions?
• The hunt for like domains: Mike Cowan: I think I have a scoop for you. fish.org & reptiles.org both link to Internet/intranet design firms. Apple could be moving in that direction.
• Bill enters the picture: Chris Eschweiler: Okay, so having mammals.org mapped to Apple is weird enough. But, like so may other AtAT viewers, it is not enough just to be weird...extreme is only the beginning. That's why I thought I'd check out reptiles.org, just to see if it was mapped to O.J. Simpson or something. It's not but on the retiles.org webpage is a link to Smack Bill Gates. Coincidence? I don't think so.
• Things get really scary: Paul Anderson: If you think that mammals.org is frightening have a look at http://www.lemurs.com/.
• The inevitable Disney connection: Daniel Papa: In response to the mammals.org situation, doesn't Disney have a new Animal Kingdom now?
• Our theory falls: Allen Huffman: I don't know where you got the iFurby information. My source says Jobs already axed that project.
• A Dogcow for every conspiracy: Adam Keller: About the mammals.org thing: Maybe Apple is holding the domain hostage until Clarus the Dogcow is classified as a mammal?
• The end of the world: Richard Malstrom: I know humans and apes are both mammals, but are you thinking what I'm thinking? Planet of the Apes! That's right. The government entrusted Bill's Windoze NT to run the defense system and oops, it crashed and set off a nuclear explosion! Dave, it was a bug Dave.

The truth is out there, probably hiding behind a lemur or something. Incidentally, Apple has so far not responded to our email on the issue, and we're not holding our collective breath. Perhaps this is just one of those things that Mankind Was Not Meant To Know™. But that doesn't mean we can't keep looking...