Everybody can relax now, because Mr. Keynote is back in the saddle. Let's get back up to speed, here; first Steve Jobs cancelled his scheduled keynote appearance at London's Apple Expo 2000, which subsequently led to the collapse of the whole show. Rumor had it that his motive was the desire to deliver a different keynote instead-- at Spring Internet World in Los Angeles, five thousand miles away. But then just two weeks before that event, Steve bailed again, forcing the show's organizers to scramble to recruit AOL's Steve Case to fill Jobs's slot. Steve's reason for the Internet World cancellation? According to rumor, he felt that the LA Convention Center's ceiling is too low. Hey, cut him some slack-- the man's mercurial, and mercurial people evidently do goofy things like this from time to time. (Case, on the other hand, is apparently immune to the anti-keynote effects that a low ceiling can invoke.)

Still, while we're the first people to give Steve room to behave, er, "eccentrically," we can't help but get a little nervous when the man known for delivering the World's Greatest Keynotes™ starts cancelling gigs. It's almost like the man's developed a case of stage fright or something. By all accounts he seemed fine on stage during his last two Macworld Expo appearances, but with audiences comprised of thousands of worshipping Macophiles, those are as close to "home turf" as it gets. Apple Expo 2000 may have been a tougher crowd, given the antagonistic stance Apple appears to have taken regarding the U.K. in recent years. And Internet World? Well, who knows-- that's a mixed bag, for sure. And while Steve and his Reality Distortion Field could probably even get the Society for the Elimination of Macs chanting his name in tearful worship, we think he might be getting cold feet as far as these keynotes go.

But fear not; Steve's returning to home turf to get his confidence back. According to an Apple press release, Steve's all set to strut his stuff before the Mac geeks of the world, as he delivers the keynote address at May's Worldwide Developers Conference. It'll be a smaller crowd than Internet World, and probably more Apple-friendly (or at least not Apple-indifferent). Plus, it's taking place on familiar ground-- the San Jose Convention Center. (Don't worry, the ceiling height there is known to be adequate for Steve's purposes.) So don't forget to tune in on May 15th, when Steve is sure to delve into the details of Mac OS X; we assume the keynote will be webcast via QuickTime 4. Provided, of course, that Steve doesn't cancel at the last minute because the barometric pressure is at sub-optimal levels.

Here we go again: it's time for another round of the Retail Rumor Mill! Wait, where are you going? Come back, we promise we're not dredging up that old saw about Best Buy wanting to sell iMacs again. Nope, this time the retail chain du jour is Circuit City. Unless you're relatively new to the whole Mac thing, you probably remember that Circuit City was one of several national retailers that sold Apple's Performa series, back when an underpowered, overpriced, lumpy beige tower was Apple's idea of a consumer-targeted Mac. Unsurprisingly, sales weren't exactly inspiring; in addition to the Performa's high price tag and anemic performance, there was also the fact that Circuit City had adopted the Universal National Retail Mac Sales Guidelines: throw one lonely Performa in the corner behind thirty Wintel systems, leave it off (or, preferably, crashed), let someone steal the mouse and never replace it, and direct all sales personnel to ridicule the Mac platform and steer any Mac-interested customers towards whichever Wintel machine happens to be overstocked at the moment.

So when Apple cleaned its retail house a few years back, Circuit City got the boot. But now that Apple's become a winner in the consumer market again, Circuit City wants a piece of the action. According to AppleInsider, the chain is currently in negotiations with Apple to start selling iMacs and iBooks sometime soon-- probably when speed-bumped iMacs are announced (we're hearing April), or maybe at this summer's Macworld Expo. Apple reps and Circuit City execs are apparently trying to hammer out those niggling little details of staff training and product display. Here's hoping that solid sales of the iMac and iBook are giving Apple some serious leverage in these negotiations.

Not that any supposed leverage Apple may have gained due to its iSuccess seems to be doing all that much good with other retailers; most national retailers who signed back on to sell Macs are still offering a Mac buying experience tantamount to a kick in the eye. CompUSA locations seem to have improved on average, but Sears still has abysmal display skills (they somehow manage to make the iMac look bad) and the world's least helpful sales staff; it's like the Performa days all over again. And we needn't delve into Apple's abortive attempts to turn Best Buy into a competent Mac reseller. But hey, while our natural pessimism forces us to think any new deal with Circuit City isn't going to be much better, at least Apple's products will be in another 600 stores coast-to-coast. Exposure is everything.

Wow, how 'bout that Apple stock, hmmm? On Tuesday it shot up almost twelve points to a hair under $135-- a new all-time high. The thing is, we're hard-pressed to see just what triggered such a massive increase. Apple didn't announce any new products on Tuesday. There weren't any really juicy Apple rumors that hit the mainstream press. There weren't even any analyst upgrades, as far as we know. About the only thing that happened was the announcement that Steve Jobs would keynote at WWDC-- and we hardly imagine that's a market trigger, even if word got out that this time ceiling height wasn't an issue. C'mon, who wasn't expecting a Stevenote at WWDC?

Could this just be a delayed reaction to last week's news about Apple signing up Tech Data as a third distributor? Maybe; the market moves in mysterious ways. And of course there was all that hooey about the quarter-point interest rate hike yesterday, which sent the whole stock market on a stampeding climb, but Apple seems to have gained a lot more than other tech stocks, so we can't shake the feeling that something else is at work, here. Maybe it's the Palm connection. It's long been rumored that Apple and Palm are working very closely together on something-- heck, it's more than a rumor; Steve Jobs said as much on stage in January. And as faithful viewer Matthew Guerrieri notes, even CNET is hinting at further Apple-Palm connections, playing up the fact that an inordinate number of Palm executives (including new chief marketing officer Satjiv Chahil) are Apple alumni. What with Palm's recent red-hot IPO, it's not impossible that these tenuous connections between Apple and Palm are driving Apple's stock through the roof.

Except, of course, for one little fact: Palm's stock price has been spiralling earthward ever since the IPO frenzy. It hit a high of $165 on its first day out of the gate, but now it's hovering near a low of $48. So much for that theory. No, we can only attribute AAPL's recent skyrocketing value to one thing: the onset of spring. With the exception of Graphite, the iMac and iBook colors aren't exactly "winters," so fashion-conscious consumers were probably all holding off on buying brightly-colored Macs until the equinox. Hey, it makes as much sense as anything else...