Far be it from us, your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff, to be needlessly alarmist, but if you're one of the lucky souls who has an iBook, YOUR HARD DRIVE IS GOING TO EXPLODE AT ANY MINUTE!! Worse yet, when it does, it's going to propel shards of jagged glass, radioactive material, and tuna fish contaminated with the anthrax bacterium all over everything within a twenty-foot radius. And worst of all, the tuna's not even dolphin-safe. So run! RUN!!

Ha ha, we're kidding, of course. No, there's no explosive material in your iBook's hard drive, nor is there any glass or plutonium used in the iBook's construction-- and what little tuna exists behind the iBook's battery bay is certified both anthrax-free and dolphin-safe. We simply wanted to make the bad news sound less bad when we broke it to you. See, while your iBook's hard drive isn't literally an incendiary device, there's a fair chance that it's still a ticking time bomb in the metaphorical sense. Perhaps you've been hearing stories about iBook hard disks losing all their data with alarming frequency? If not, there's a pretty good encapsulation of the problem over at Go2Mac. Basically, some people go to boot up their iBooks and get the dreaded blinking question mark; booting the iBook from a CD-ROM works, but the iBook's internal disk still won't show up on the Desktop, and Disk First Aid sees the disk and finds problems, but can't fix them. Reportedly no third-party utilities have been able to repair the damage either.

It seems that this is happening often enough that Apple's Tech Exchange message boards are a blur of frenzied posting activity, and Apple's officially taking notice. For now they are asking for people with affected systems to email them System Profile Reports so they can determine what, if anything, these bummed iBooks have in common. (A bad batch of tuna, perhaps?) In the meantime, if you are among the iBook-enabled, we hope you have a backup strategy in place; nothing wrecks a day faster than sudden data loss. Except possibly explosions, glass shards, radiation poisoning, and anthrax.

Sounds like someone at Apple's been flapping gums with the analysts again. Don't worry, though; the news is all good this time around. Apple's still on a hot streak, and the unnamed source representing the company evidently couldn't help but do a little financial verbal strutting. Hey, as far as we're concerned, if you got it, flaunt it.

According to a Bloomberg article, analyst Steve Fortuna of Merrill Lynch & Co. was the lucky guy on the receiving end of Apple's boastathon. In response to Fortuna's forecast of 35 to 37% unit growth for Apple this fiscal year, Apple sounded a hearty "Ha!" and rejoined with a beefier estimate of 40% instead. And as for revenue, well, Apple thinks Fortuna's undisclosed estimate was a little skimpy, there, too-- the company expects to see 36% growth in revenue for the fiscal year ending September 30th. These numbers are Mighty; all shall bow before them. (Well, okay, maybe not, but at least the news seemed to give Apple's stock price a little boost; AAPL closed up 2 9/16.)

But back to those unit shipments for a second. One of the interesting bits in Fortuna's analysis is that this Apple source reportedly alluded to an expansion of the product line to include "more appliance-like devices." Sounds like at least some of those massively-increased unit shipments are going to consist of-- dare we say it?-- Apple-Palm devices. Oh sure, you scoff, and who could blame you? What with the Apple-branded Palm rumors catching up to the Disney buyout rumors in the longevity race, we feel a little silly ourselves. "But this time, for sure!"

So there it goes: the final courtroom arguments in the "Redmond Justice" trial. Wave bye-bye, because it's all downhill from here. TechWeb has a nice summary of the day's proceedings, including the statements made where the real drama takes place-- on the courthouse steps. There were no big surprises and no twists and turns; the government's Joel Klein made his requisite call for "competition on the merits" and "drastic and far-reaching" remedies, while Microsoft's senior veep for law Bill Neukom trotted out that tired old saw about how the government "seems to want to rewrite the antitrust laws in a way which would slow innovation, raise prices, and harm consumers in this country." (Yeah, Bill, of course; that's exactly what they're trying to do. Didn't you get the memo?)

As for what happened during the final arguments themselves, well, The Register has the goods. Apparently in light of Jackson's findings of fact which firmly established that Microsoft wields monopoly power, the company's legal eagles have tried a different approach: a copyright defense. The argument goes something like this; the entire "Windows experience" is protected by the copyright held for the operating system, so the government can't prevent the company from, say, adding Internet Explorer, or forcing computer manufacturers not to install competing software on the desktop, etc. Reportedly Jackson pretty much cut that argument short, though, when he stated, "copyright does not protect the conduct with which your company is charged." So much for last-ditch efforts.

Anyway, apparently Judge Jackson's verdict is now a mere "four to six weeks" away, so if Microsoft's going to settle, the clock is ticking. And given that Judge Jackson actually made a reference to John D. Rockefeller during the proceedings (Standard Oil, anyone?), we have to say, Microsoft is looking ripe for a takedown. Does anyone happen to know the Vegas odds on the trial outcome? Because the only sounder investment than Apple stock these days would seem to be a bet on Microsoft's loss in this trial...