Holy cow, is it that time of year again? Apple's annual shareholder meeting is tomorrow, and it totally slipped in under our radar. Not too many people have been talking about it before now, which is probably due to Apple's relatively stable financial footing. Robert Morgan's latest RFI Report states as much, predicting "a lack of thrills and chills." When there's no red ink, what's there to talk about? That's not to say that a few interesting rumors haven't surfaced, however...

As faithful viewer Chris Murphy (who waves "hello" to all his friends out there) points out, Larry Ellison's been flapping his gums at the press again. Larry (the CEO of Oracle, a member of Apple's board, and Steve Jobs' bestest buddy) has a long and glorious history of "letting slip" interesting little tidbits about Apple's future product plans. This time, according to a CNET article, he hints that Apple's future includes a role as "the great provider of digital appliances." What exactly does he mean by that? We can't say for sure, but it sounds a lot like the kind of stuff that Apple Recon's been going on about for years and years now-- that whole "Golden Convergence" of computers and the Internet with TV and other home entertainment electronics. Will your next TV have a translucent casing and a big honkin' Apple logo on it? In addition, Larry says Apple's working on price, portability, and "great new display technology." It'll be interesting to see if any of this comes out at the shareholder meeting.

But any formal revelations of Apple's future product directions might take a back seat to more dramatic news, if MacCentral's correct. They're saying that rumors are flying about how Steve Jobs finally plans to drop the "interim" label from his title and officially become Apple's permanent CEO. Well, that would be nice, but frankly, we've heard that one before; remember back when "interim CEO" sounded like a bad thing? These days, we can't imagine that anyone's really expecting Steve to jet any time soon, but back then, every time Steve was scheduled to make a semi-public appearance, rumors flew that he'd be taking the job on a permanent basis. Whether this comes to pass or not, we're plenty happy either way-- provided that Steve keeps doing what he's been doing.

Time to rein in the Hounds of Rumor? Apple's always so tight-lipped about what it's doing that rumors often expand to fill the void of official news. Most recently, the complete and utter lack of iMacs in the retail channel (yes, a few people tell us that there are literally zero available to order, and stores are limited to stock on hand) has led to much speculation that Apple may be flushing their inventory to start fresh with a new iMac model any time now. After all, it's not beyond the realm of possibility; it's been nearly three months since the fruit-flavored models first appeared, and given the almost alarming frequency with which Apple's been revising the iMac, we'd say we're about due for another model.

Finally, though, Apple has broken its silence to put the matter to rest. Jeff Hansen, Apple's Senior Director of Channel Sales and Distribution, just sent email to all Apple-authorized resellers to explain what's up with all the shortages; that email has since been plastered all over the 'net, including at Mac OS Rumors. The gist of the letter is that the iMac shortages are not due to any discontinuations; all five flavors are still alive (contradicting news we heard recently that Tangerine had gotten the axe) and Apple hopes to deliver new supplies this week. Jeff says that it's all just a demand problem: "the demand for the new five-colored iMacs has greatly exceeded expectations... while it is difficult to maintain an adequate supply of all colors, we will continue to do our best to make them all available." Hm. Well, considering how tough it can be to find a Grape iMac, Apple might have to start doing better than their best to keep customers and resellers happy.

So there you have it. According to an actual Apple representative, all five iMac flavors are here to stay-- at least in the short term. Also, new supplies of all five flavors should start reaching resellers shortly. That means that if you really have your heart set on a specific flavor iMac, in a week or so you shouldn't have too much difficulty getting your hands on one. At least, we sincerely hope that that's what happens...

Uh oh-- looks like Apple's playing the Name Game again. The Name Game is the way in which Apple manages to dodge clauses in licensing agreements by arbitrarily changing the names of their upcoming products; it's sort of a semantic shell game. And it's the kind of behavior that you might expect to see emerging from Redmond or thereabouts, but instead it's running rampant in Cupertino. For an example, consider the story of a Mac department who bought a Mac OS subscription license a couple of years ago, and who has now been told that Mac OS X Server is not covered under the terms of the agreement. A MacInTouch special report has the details.

The license was purchased through Claris and was set to expire in June of this year; it included upgrades for all new releases of the Mac OS until then for no extra cost. "Rhapsody Unified" is specifically included under the terms of the license, so the purchaser of the subscription license called Apple to obtain Mac OS X Server-- the closest thing to "Rhapsody Unified" that Apple has ever shipped, or is going to ship. But Apple's lawyers have decided that Mac OS X Server is not the same as "Rhapsody Unified" (which is, of course, true) and therefore it isn't included in the subscription. And since the whole subscription program no longer exists, the contract can't be extended past June, so Mac OS X can't be included either. Sound a little iffy? Apple has a point, but we're a little bummed at the way they're handling this. After all, Rhapsody Unified was supposed to ship last year; it's not the licensee's fault that Apple missed its delivery dates and changed their OS strategy. We would have liked to see them agree to provide Mac OS X Server-- or, better yet, to extend the subscription license to include the full desktop version of Mac OS X, which is much more in line with the spirit of the agreement. Somehow we doubt that's going to happen, though.

If this scenario is conjuring up vague feelings of déjà vu, it's not because your synapses are misfiring. (Your synapses probably are misfiring, but that's not why Apple's move seems so familiar.) Apple launched a similar stunt a couple of years back as the secret weapon in the Clone Wars. See, way back at the dawn of time, the Mac world was anxiously awaiting a new operating system code-named Copland. Once Apple formally announced details of Copland's upcoming release, it was officially known as "Mac OS 8." But Copland fell apart at the seams even while Apple kept improving the then-current System 7.5. First they released System 7.6, and when System 7.7 was ready to ship, Apple suddenly decided to call that "Mac OS 8," even though it really wasn't what anyone expected Mac OS 8 to be: it was essentially a tweaked System 7 with a Coplandesque look slapped on top. This screwed the cloners, whose Mac OS licenses only covered "System 7.x," so they suddenly found themselves unable to ship their computers pre-loaded with the latest Apple operating system. Ah, semantics-- what a glorious tool when weaseling out of unwanted license agreements...