Ask and ye shall receive. After getting all hot and bothered over the prospect of becoming bona fide Apple-certified technicians via the new $299 AppleCare Technician Training, our hopes and dreams crumbled to dust upon being informed that we still wouldn't be able to order service parts or perform warranty repairs without being employed by an Authorized Service Provider. Fine, then... we wondered aloud, "how does one get one's house sanctified as an Authorized Service Provider?" And once again, it's The Mac Show's Shawn King with the answer. (You can repay his attention to detail by tuning in to his show Wednesday night at 9PM EST.)

So, without further ado, let's take a look at Apple's requirements for locations wishing to become Authorized Service Providers. First on the list: "Demonstrate financial viability with an established line of credit of at least $25,000 with your primary financial institution." Our initial reaction: "Oh crap, you've gotta be solvent." So we're pretty much out of the running right from the get-go, unless our "primary financial institution" (we call her "Mom"-- nah, just kidding) decides to chuck a wad of cash at us for being upright citizens and flossing each day.

Now, it occurs to us that all those junk-mail offers to apply for a Titanium-Iridium MasterCard with a $100,000 credit limit may well miraculously come in handy to meet criterion #1. But even if we did have that kind of credit, we don't think we're up to the task of turning the AtAT studios into a full-fledged Authorized Service Provider. For one thing, the requirement of having "an established walk-in or drop-off service location with... business hours" would probably wreak utter havoc with our anarchic sleep patterns. And then there's the issue of paying the annual $699 AASP Membership Fee for the privilege of being awoken at the ungodly hour of eleven AM by some whiny "novelist" complaining that his PowerBook's hard drive crashed and ate four years of work. Somehow that holds about as much appeal to us as, say, repeatedly slamming our fingers in a car door. Sigh. So we figure we'll forgo setting up the "AtAT House of Mac Repair" and stick strictly to the business of soap opera production.

Never mind that 17" Graphite iMac that all the rumormongers are playing up; it didn't show at the Expo, and frankly we're a little tired of waiting for it. Luckily for our gnatlike attention spans, there's a new iMac rumor in town, and it's looking further into the future. MacUser is claiming that Apple's planning yet another drastic redesign of its funky little space eggs sometime this summer-- a complete overhaul as thorough as the "Kihei" slotless revolution last fall. (You say summer's too soon for another total retooling? You say that Apple started working on Kihei right after the original Bondi Blue iMac shipped, so another new iMac design probably wouldn't realistically surface before 2001? Cut it out, you're stepping on our buzz.)

Remember when Apple persuaded IBM to start building Motorola-designed, AltiVec-enhanced G4 chips when the G4 shortage was at its peak? Well, apparently MacUser's sources are claiming that most of those IBM-fabricated G4 chips aren't destined for Power Macs after all; they're going into new G4-based iMacs instead. Yes, you heard right-- rumor has it that the iMac is getting upgraded to G4 status this summer. Take that how you will; we choose to swallow it with a couple of metric tons of sodium chloride.

That said, a processor swap, even a jump from G3 to G4, isn't a dramatic design change. But MacUser also claims that "the new iMac will also feature a redesigned case," omitting any details other than the possibility of-- you guessed it!-- a seventeen-inch screen. Still skeptical of these "sources"? You won't be after you hear this: those selfsame sources also claim that "every machine" in Apple's product line will receive "either a speed bump or a complete redesign" this year. Amazing! Despite the fact that Apple has at least speed-bumped the iMac every few months since its debut and managed a complete revamp of all four product lines last year, we just assumed that Apple was going to let its products languish without so much as a clock speed increase this year. Excuse us while we scrape our jaws up off the floor...

This week's "Dubious Distinction Award" goes to Apple Computer, for being "honored" as the "symbol of 1980s technology" in this year's Mobile Mystics Parade. If you trundle 'round to the Incredible Hulk-themed web site of the Mobile Mystics Mardi Gras Association, you'll note that their annual parade is slated to begin at 2PM on Saturday, February 26th-- and at that time, according to The Mac Observer, an "Eighties Tech float" featuring a giant Apple computer will make its way down the parade route. But if you're flashing back to those cool giant inflatable iMacs that made their appearance back in 1998, you may be sorely disappointed. Remember, we're talking eighties tech here, so the Apple float is a bit... old-fashioned.

In fact, if it were only old-fashioned, we might not be so weirded out. We lived with beige boxes and a multicolored Apple logo for years and years-- certainly through the '80s. But the representation on the float in question is also disturbingly off-kilter, as you can see for yourself from the picture accompanying the article. First of all, the screen has an aspect ratio approaching that of the new Cinema Display-- super-wide format. Even our //e's Extended 80-Column Card didn't do that to our monitor. The Apple logo on the screen is decidedly odd; it's got lots more than six colors and its stem is rectangular and pointing in the wrong direction. Granted, that's probably to avoid potential dust-ups with Apple's lawyers, but it still gives us the willies. The computer itself appears to be a narrow box (less than half the width of the monitor) with a floppy disk sticking out of its single central slot. Or is that just an Apple ][ external 5.25" floppy drive? The keyboard has a power key on the wrong side. And the mouse has two buttons.

But let's try to ignore this bizarre and inaccurate representation of Apple's earlier computers just for a moment. The real reason that this is such a dubious distinction is that Apple's always been far ahead of the rest of the industry in so many ways, and now the company's being honored as a representative of eighties technology. Backhanded compliment, or just an unintentional slight? We're guessing the latter, since the organization's web site proudly proclaims that it was "made on an Apple Macintosh." Still, to avoid drawing unfavorable attention to the decidedly '80s roots of certain chunks of the current Mac OS, we're doubting that the Mobile Mystics Parade will be showing up on Apple's Hot News page anytime soon.