You know how a lot of times, rumors mostly come true, but the reality doesn't quite match up to the hype? Like when Apple finally took the wraps off the long-awaited Pismo PowerBook, it turned out to be pretty much last year's model with AirPort and FireWire thrown in. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but all those high-flying rumors about a spiffy new translucent clamshell design pretty much went out the window. Or when the iBook was first unveiled, there was a general sense of disappointment from folks like us, who were expecting a consumer-oriented laptop to be lighter and smaller than a PowerBook, for easier use by kids; instead it was nearly a full pound heavier. Generally those of us who follow all the rumors are doomed for at least a little disappointment when reality smacks us upside the head.

On rare occasions, though, the reality winds up being much nicer than even the wildest rumors. Perhaps you recall that a while back the whispers around the water cooler predicted that Apple would soon ship a shrinkwrapped version of iMovie for $99. It made sense; after all, iMovie is a great consumer-level video editing application, and it's lovely that it comes bundled with every iMac DV, but not every budding director is the iMac type. Let's say you're a professional graphic designer. ("You're a professional graphic designer.") As such, you need the extra power and flexibility of a Power Mac G4 to get your work done efficiently. But on your off-hours you'd love to tinker around with editing all those home movies of your kids-- and you're not exactly keen on shelling out a grand for Final Cut Pro, especially given its learning curve. Wouldn't it be perfect if you could just pick up a $99 copy of iMovie and have some fun?

Well, here's where the "better than rumor" part kicks in-- as faithful viewer GORDYmac was the first (of many) to point out, Apple's just made iMovie free. That's right, it'll cost you absolutely zilch if you want to download it, and if you'd rather have it shipped to your doorstep on a shiny new CD-ROM, you only need to shell out $19.95 for "shipping and handling." (Just watch all those copies on eBay suddenly get really, really cheap; betcha those people that paid $125 a copy last month are feeling pretty stupid right about now.)

What's the catch? Well, for one thing, this "trial version" doesn't come with tutorials. For another, if you're planning to install it on your older FireWire-enabled Mac, you may be out of luck; Apple's posted requirements claim you need either a Power Mac G4 or a Pismo PowerBook, and you also need Mac OS 9.0.4. Still, we figured it'd be worth a shot-- heck, it's free, right? So we downloaded the 20 MB installer and ran it on a beige G3/266 with Apple's FireWire kit installed. The installer didn't care that we're running Mac OS 8.6-- and once we fired up the iMovie application itself, we found that it didn't particularly care, either. We don't have a digital camcorder handy to test this out still further (though in camera mode, iMovie just says "Camera Not Connected," which we consider a good sign), but at least we got to mess with the titles and sound effects. For 320 KB of proof that iMovie at least runs on older systems, check out our test movie, which displays an appropriate PG-13 quote from Beavis and Butthead. See? It works!

Whoa, check it out-- faithful viewer Jason Collier notes that e-tailer king Amazon.com has just opened a Macintosh Store. It's not like we as a community are hurting for online sites from which to buy our Mac stuff, but one more isn't going to hurt. Plus, since it's Amazon, you can use Amazon-specific features; throw a Thrustmaster Dual Analog Gamepad onto your Wish List, or go impulse-shopping in the Games section and buy a slew of titles with 1-Click shopping. The selection isn't super-great yet (just take a gander at their collection of hard drives), and the prices aren't blowing our socks off either, but for the convenience of being able to throw a copy of Unreal Tournament into the cart with our preorder of The X-Files Season One on DVD, a Keely Smith CD, and the latest Buffy paperback, heck, we'll take it.

The big-picture benefit of this, of course, is that it shows people that a mega-huge retailer like Amazon considers the a Macintosh community big enough to be a source of income. That's a good thing-- really. Anything that increases the visibility of Mac products is a-okay in our book. Of course, the question in our minds is, does the advent of this Mac Store have anything to do with Amazon's recent hiring of ex-Apple Europe head honcho Diego Piacentini? After all, Amazon just hired him away a couple of months ago, and now this pops up. Coincidenza?

One big hitch: you can't actually buy Macs themselves from Amazon-- yet. To do that, you still have to go to the Apple Store or one of the larger catalog resellers, or be an existing customer at one of the smaller resellers like Small Dog. Still, an Amazon Mac store is a huge step forward, and frankly, we wouldn't be terribly surprised if Amazon soon became an authorized Apple reseller. Er, on second thought, maybe not-- we doubt Apple would want to give its own Apple Store that kind of competition...

Some things we read these days just force us to let out a long, ragged sigh. Take, for example, this ZDNet article about Microsoft's push into the so-called "embedded systems" world. The idea here is that just about every kind of electrical appliance in existence could benefit from an integrated, on-board computer-- not necessarily with disk drives and a keyboard and all the standard personal-computer-type accoutrements, but some kind of solid-state processor and memory with enough logic to improve the user experience. Like, your toaster could scan your fingerprint when you push down the lever and automatically adjust the darkness setting to suit your preferences; you like your bagels light and your wheat toast dark, but your spouse likes everything a hair short of actually catching fire. Get the idea?

So Microsoft's making inroads into the embedded operating system market, and that's where the long, ragged sigh comes in. The article leads off with "A Windows-powered gas pump or networked refrigerator may sound more like science fiction than fact." Actually, to us it sounds more like a frickin' horror story. Our fridge works. Our dishwasher works. The absolute last thing we want to do to them is replace them with new ones that rely on Windows to operate properly. "Hon, the fridge blue-screened again-- all the Popsicles melted." Or watch a divide-by-zero error turn your dishwasher into a glass-breaking, dish-cracking appliance from hell. Then there's the dryer that shrinks all your clothes, the hot tub that boils you alive, the blender that leaps off its base and goes for your throat, etc., etc., etc.

Remember, Bill Gates's own house is run on Windows NT, and he admitted years ago that one night he couldn't get his bedroom TV to turn off. His solution was to cover the screen with a towel and go to sleep. Is that the kind of architecture you want in your coffeemaker? You know, with Apple striving to be the Sony of the computer world, maybe it's time it tried to be the Maytag, too... we'd feel a lot more comfortable buying a microwave oven with Mac-based technologies driving the logic than one built on Windows.