For those of us who've been waiting for QuickTime 4 for so long we've almost forgotten why, we're finally entering the home stretch-- at least, we think so. The annual National Association of Broadcasters conference is imminent, and most observers expect Apple to take the wraps off of the latest incarnation to draw some welcome attention from all those TV types. Longtime faithful viewers may recall that at last year's event, Steve Jobs' keynote address amounted to little more than an extended commercial for QuickTime 3, which left many in the audience nonplussed due to QuickTime's lack of live streaming technology. But that very feature is version 4's big carrot-on-a-stick, and while demos of live streamed QuickTime have been trotted out at most Apple demos since last May's Worldwide Developers Conference, none of will actually be able to use that oh-so-cool technology until QuickTime 4 officially hits the streets. So we're all keeping our fingers crossed.

In the meantime, QuickTime 4 continues its transformation from a cool hack that shows jerky, grainy video in a tiny computer window into a full-fledged cross-platform multimedia operating system unto itself. According to Apple Insider, lab rats in Cupertino continue to graft new features onto QuickTime's bionic frame, such as native MPEG Layer 3 support. Fans of MP3 rejoice, as QuickTime 4 reportedly not only understands the format and plays the files, but it also plays them well-- QuickTime 4 has a "fuller" sound and sports bass and treble controls and a built-in graphic equalizer to let the user tweak its output for specific conditions. Sounds like Apple expects MP3 to stick around (much to the music industry's chagrin) and Apple wants QuickTime 4 to be the MP3 platform of choice.

But that's not all that's been bolted onto QuickTime 4's ever-more-versatile frame; Apple's also spent some time overhauling its appearance. Remember the cool 3D circular controller that handles DVD video playback in the PowerBook G3 Series? QuickTime 4 now sports a similarly nifty inferface, complete with a brushed metal finish, slide-out drawers, embossed buttons-- the works. Forget the Bionic Man; the new QuickTime looks more like a revamped RoboCop, and it's ready to pound the tar out of all other media systems. Or at least it's almost ready. Any day now. We hope.

So here we were, expecting that the whole "Banana and Cherry" series of rumors would have crumbled to dust by now, but they just won't go away. In the past few weeks, several sources reported that Apple was revamping its color palette for the fruit-flavored iMacs to help equalize customer demand. Basically, while Blueberry was by far the most popular and Grape was right up there, too, the other three flavors weren't quite as grab-worthy. To compensate, it was rumored that Apple was ready to replace the pinkish Strawberry (the "Hello Kitty" iMac flavor) with a healthy red Cherry, and poor forlorn Tangerine ("But it brings out the orange highlights in your complexion! Hey, where are you going?") would be retired in favor of a yellow Banana. (Lime is lime-- there isn't much anyone can do about that. And besides, we like it.) To us, it sounded plausible-- heck, even likely-- but it also had that faint smell of hoax about it, perhaps because it was just a mite too plausible. Anyway, once the SKU numbers for the new 333 MHz iMacs were released and they clearly showed Tangerine and Strawberry on the list, we figured that Banana and Cherry were either destined for future iMac models, or just plain fiction.

But guess what? The Mac Observer reports that the flavor revolution is still go. They've gotten email from "several retailers" who swear that the new colors are real-- and not in some future iMac due this summer. According to these folks, Banana and Cherry are part of the 333 MHz iMac line-up, officially due in a week. According to one such anonymous source, just because the SKU's show Tangerine and Strawberry "doesn't mean [Apple] won't ship Banana and Cherry instead... because that's exactly what's going to happen." Now, we haven't heard from any resellers (some of whom are rumored to have already received some 333 MHz iMacs in stock) who can confirm this with an eyewitness account, so at this point, we still have to count the whole story squarely in the rumor category. Still, it's rare to see a rumor so widely reported that sticks around for so long.

In fact, the sheer "stickiness" of this rumor makes us think that if it turns out not to be true, it must have originated from a pretty trustworthy source to have been taken for granted by so many who have passed it on. So if the new, speedier iMacs are introduced next week and Tangerine and Strawberry are still firmly in the lineup, we have to wonder: could the Banana/Cherry rumor have been deliberate Apple misinformation intended to help isolate a leak? Oooooh, intrigue-y.

Us: "What the heck is that thing?" You: "What thing?" Us: "Why, that Weird Mac Thing on eBay, of course!" It's a flat grey box that looks like it has the footprint of, say, a VCR. It's got an Apple logo on the front, ventilation holes in the top, and a power switch and a slew of ports in the back-- including semi-typical video stuff like RCA audio and video, S-Video out, RF in and out, and SCART, but also some interfaces you won't find in much TV equipment: SCSI, DIN-8 serial, and network ports. The seller claims he got it through an estate sale, and when he plugged it into his TV, some kind of system came up, but he's "not a Mac guy" so he doesn't know what it was. Sounds funky, yes?

People who regularly check out Apple Recon may notice that it looks pretty similar to the photo they posted of a set-top box prototype. Recon, of course, is strutting around doing their "superior dance," since they were a huge proponent of an Apple set-top box, and they took a lot of heat for claiming that Apple had a product in development which then got "Steved." Recon claims that this particular "Weird Mac Thing" at ebay is a "European version of the Apple Interactive TV Box" that would have been seeded around 1995. So now they're doing the "we told you so" thing they do so well and claiming that Apple should never have cancelled the project; they say that since people are bidding high for this thing on eBay, that proves that people want them and "are willing to pay a premium for them." Personally, we consider that logic hideously flawed; after all, the PiPPiN kept consumers away in droves, but these days we bet some Apple collectors would still jump at the chance to blow a grand on a PiPPiN prototype. All the eBay auction proves is that the prototype exists, and that (so far) thirty-two people are willing to pay a premium for some rare Apple memorabilia. (But that's not to say that Recon is wrong-- just that the eBay auction doesn't prove they're right.)

If you're in the market for a "Weird Mac Thing" (and hey, who isn't?), you've got another four days or so to make your bid, but be warned: some people will pay almost anything to get their hands on a rare item with an Apple logo on it. (That's why the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh debuted at something like $7500.) Last we saw, bidding was up to $921, and personally, for that price, we'd think you'd be better off picking up a revision B iMac instead of something that Apple didn't even consider compelling enough to release. Especially when they thought the PiPPiN was compelling enough to release...