Brace yourselves; we at AtAT have stumbled upon Apple's biggest secret yet. If you think development of the iBook was kept under heavy security, you're right-- but the Cone of Silence around the iBook project was nothing compared to the secrecy imparted to Apple's most ambitious project yet. It's not a new computer. It's not a new operating system. From what we've been able to piece together from the dying gasps of the few Apple employees who made it out alive, it's mad scientist-style messing around with the very fabric of reality itself: Apple is actually developing technology that will let them manipulate the flow of time. (Insert dramatic chord here.)

It started as an ambitious project to duplicate Steve Jobs' own naturally-occurring Reality Distortion Field so that other high-ranking Apple executives could hold complete sway over customers and media alike. (Imagine an army of Steves disseminated world-wide and selling Macs to the masses. Now that's a plan to increase market share!) Laboratory attempts to isolate the field, however, have been only partially successful so far; when a prototype was applied to a laboratory-grade Average Shmoe™ who had been told that the iMac is up to twice as fast as comparably-priced Wintel systems, the subject first nodded enthusiastically but eventually asked about performance in real-world applications. (The subject was subsequently "eliminated" to prevent any corruption among the test group.)

One useful and fairly successful offshoot of the RDF Isolation Project, however, has been the application of fundamental distortion waveforms to localized detectable time streams. In its first practical application, Apple's bending the perception of iBook delivery times. To see this remarkable phenomenon up close and personal, visit the Apple Store and start ordering yourself an iBook (either flavor). When you get to the "Review Your Order" page, take careful note of two things. First, look next to the iBook's picture and note the caption that reads, "Place your iBook order today for delivery in late September." Then glance down towards the iBook line item listing and look at what Apple's quoting in the "To Ship" column. When last we checked, it read "70 days," which places delivery in-- mid-October. Late September and mid-October at the same time? Could it be? Astounding! With further development, Apple's time-distortion work may eventually let the company travel back a few years to undo some of its more hideous business errors. Ya think?

We know there are plenty of Palm enthusiasts out there already, who are PDAing up a storm-- but the AtAT staff continues to take a "wait and see" approach. That's not to say that the Palm hasn't proven itself to be a useful and popular digital device; we're just patiently (well, okay, maybe not so patiently) waiting for whatever's going to come of the much-rumored collaboration between Palm and Apple. Macworld Expo came and went with no mention of any partnership, but we continue our pipe dream of a handheld that marries the installed base and sheer market force of the Palm with the best features and technologies of Apple's cancelled Newton.

Call us wacky, but we still think the signs are all there. Fact: Steve Jobs tried to buy Palm, and when that failed, he tried to buy Handspring (the Palm licensee started up by the Palm founders)-- and failed at that, too. So we know Jobs likes the Palm, and apparently wants Apple involved in the platform's development. Since the buyouts failed, a collaboration seems to be the most likely way to do that. And the glowing pro-Palm propaganda at Apple's web site seems just a little too gushingly effervescent not to be foreshadowing something big; Real News From Palm Computing at least focuses on the Palm MacPac connectivity software, but Secret of Palm's Success is a flat-out Palm commercial, with any mention of Apple or the Mac seeming purely incidental. And why did Apple refuse to sell off the Newton's technologies even after the project was cancelled?

So we keep waiting. We're hoping that what Palm gets from Apple is the Newton's handwriting recognition, which actually became startlingly accurate in later versions of the MessagePad, and which we find more comfortable and natural to use than the glyph-based Graffiti. Instead, the only innovation we've seen Palm incorporate into its devices is Apple's industry-leading use of translucent plastics: according to a CNET article, Palm is about to introduce "The Graduate," a version of the Palm IIIe whose only departure from the existing model is a see-through case. (Shades of the clear MessagePad 110, anyone?) Hey, it's a step in the right direction, at any rate. :)

Poor Microsoft; even the companies they buy can't seem to stay out of court. Faithful viewer Steve Pissocra pointed us towards a ZDNet article detailing the Redmond Giant's latest legal scrape: Boathouse Row, a web site that sells official NFL cheerleader calendars and posters, is suing Microsoft because LinkExchange allegedly started issuing banner ads for porn sites. The unwanted ads, which appeared on Boathouse Row's web site and linked to sites offering child pornography and other "lewd sexual and illegal material," are expressly forbidden by LinkExchange's own terms of service; the company actually claimed that the appearance of porn ads "was not possible." But when faced with screenshots of the banners appearing on the litigant's site, they changed their tune, claiming that they "can't be held responsible for sites that change their topic or focus after the initial evaluation." Hmmm.

But first, some background for the uninitiated. LinkExchange has been around for a long time, and basically it works like this: say you've got a web site and you'd like to promote it, but you don't have any cash to spend on advertising. When you sign up with LinkExchange, you add code to your site which references LinkExchange's ad servers, so your visitors are seeing banner ads for other LinkExchange members' sites. In exchange, your own banner gets shown on other sites, and theoretically, people find out about your site and you get some "free" advertising. Neat idea, right? Microsoft thought so, too, which is why they bought the company last November, in the classic Microsoftian manner. But we don't think they expected to receive a lawsuit as part of the bargain.

Anyway, Boathouse Row claims that the presence of unwanted pornographic ads actually cost them business, once the Oakland Raiders found out. The Raiders had a sales contract with Boathouse Row, which they amended once news of the porn banners reached them-- hence, the lawsuit. So, chalk up another task for the Microsoft legal team, who, we suspect, is probably glad to get a little work not related to antitrust issues. The individual lawyers in Redmond are probably falling all over themselves begging for the porn banner case just for a change of pace.