Wake up and smell the Sage, people-- evil is afoot! Or if it's not actually evil, then it's at least some dark, frog-suppressing force that's up to no good. Faithful viewer Ben Cruz (and many others) wrote in to note that the new commercial for the Sage iMac has mysteriously vanished from Apple's site without a trace. You know about these new commercials, right? When Steve unveiled the iMac's new colors last week, he also gave the audience a sneak preview of four brand-spankin'-new ads that showcased each of the new hues. And not long after the keynote, QuickTime versions of those four ads (plus the new commercial for the Pro Mouse) were all available for downloading from Apple's site. Now, however, while the Indigo, Ruby, and Snow commercials are all still available, the Sage one, which featured Kermit the Frog singing "It's Not Easy Being Green," is MIA-- yanked with no explanation, as if it had never existed. Ominous, no? We should have guessed this was coming when, on the way out of the keynote, instead of playing Kermit's song over the PA, the techs piped in "Scarborough Fair." Who wants to bet that the Sage commercial will resurface with the mellow sounds of Simon and Garfunkel?

Now, at first we figured that, when it comes to songs in commercials, Apple simply has it in for the color green. Remember the "iMovie Directed By Dad" commercial? When first introduced during a Stevenote last year, the music used was that Green Day ballad you heard far too often. By the time it hit the airwaves, however, all traces of Green Day had been expunged, and Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" was used instead. So for a while we thought that the connection was simply color: Green Day and "It's Not Easy Being Green." Like, a lawyer in Apple Legal has an irrational fear of green-themed music or something.

But in light of other recent developments, we now think the removal of Kermie's song is more related to his species than his color. Is anyone else sensing a pattern, here? Yesterday we determined that Apple's legal department was discriminating against elephants, and now we find that Apple is also repressing the free speech rights of frogs. We're pretty sure Steve's not behind this speciesist agenda, seeing as he's a vegan and all-- and he even noted during last week's keynote that of all the music used in the new iMac commercials, he liked Kermit's song the best. (With Elvis and Clapton in the lineup, that's saying something.) Here's hoping he notices what's going on and puts a stop to this egregious anti-animal behavior before Apple incurs the wrath of PETA or something.

Speaking of that keynote, while the AtAT staff continually thanks providence that we were able to witness the event live and in person, the vast majority of souls who saw it were tuned into the QuickTime webcast instead. What you may not know, however, is that last week's webcast marked the first time Apple streamed content specifically tuned for high-bandwidth lines, meaning that the company was pushing a simply ridiculous amount of data out over the 'net. In fact, the numbers have since been tallied, and Apple (and its bandwidth-tuning partner Akamai) found them impressive enough to justify a press release.

Here's the deal: last week's keynote webcast set a new record for "the delivery of content at broadband rates." According to Apple, "more than 6 terabytes of content" were splurted out across the 'net in the space of an hour and a half. (Doing the math, we figure that's an average of about 1.2 GB every second. Yikes.) So where did all that data go? Into the systems of some "95,000 unique web visitors," of course. At the pipe-bursting peak of the event, Apple and Akamai reportedly streamed "more than 4.3 gigabits per second" of broadband video to "more than 21,000 simultaneous viewers." As they said in Ghostbusters, "that's a big Twinkie."

But on the other hand, we've got to say this: terabytes, shmerabytes. We won't be overly impressed until Mac fans can enjoy a Stevenote webcast without complaining afterwards about frequent disconnections, dropped audio, dropped video, and an overall unpleasant experience. Personally, when we're stuck watching Steve via QuickTime, we're happy for whatever we can get, but by the sound of things, plenty of people last week experienced major frustration while trying to tune in to Steve's charming visage, even over a broadband connection. Not that things aren't improving-- they are. But right now, such is the nature of the medium, we're afraid, and Apple and Akamai have a long way to go before they can claim frustration-free webcasts. (Once they figure out how to push a free Pro Mouse to everyone who tuned in via the 'net, we'll be really impressed.)

By the way, the keynote is still available as video-on-demand, and now that millions of rumor-crazed Mac fans aren't all trying to tune in at once, you may have excellent luck grabbing and holding a crystal-clear stream from beginning to end. Sure, it's not exactly news anymore-- but it's still Steve. And maybe-- just maybe-- you'll be able to hear the AtAT staff spontaneously curse in disbelief when the low-end iMac's new price is revealed. What could be more fun than that?

Now that the Reality Distortion Field is starting to wear off a little, fewer people are trying to sell their kids on eBay to finance a new G4 Cube and more are starting to ask, "why?" As in, why on earth did Apple create the Cube? Why is it so unexpandable? Why is it marketed towards graphic professionals, when with a few tweaks it could have been an excellent monitorless iMac or business-targeted system? And most importantly, why is it almost exactly eight inches on a side?

Well, believe it or not, Newsweek got to the bottom of the Cube mystery in a short interview with Uncle Steve. In an unguarded moment, Apple's mad genius iCEO let slip that the Cube is actually a "brain in a beaker." (Okay, so he said it's like a brain in a beaker, but we all know what he really meant.) And there you have it: the grisly truth.

Yes, folks, the Cube doesn't house a tightly-miniaturized Power Mac G4 system as the specs would have you believe. Those out-of-the-sleeve Cubes demonstrated at the Expo, with the RAM expansion slots and the AirPort slot and all that? Those were decoys-- pure skunkworks meant to throw us off the trail. When the Cube actually ships in three weeks, there won't be anything inside but a living, pulsating, human brain suspended in life-preserving fluid and wired up to do your bidding. Apple's betting that, since the Cube is so unexpandable (and it's being marketed at artsy types who generally aren't into tweaking their hardware), no one will ever bother to try and open it, thus keeping the brain's existence a horrifying secret. Think about it: how big's your brain? It'd fit in an eight-inch Cube enclosure just about perfectly, we imagine.

So where's Apple harvesting all these brains for the "million" Cubes it plans to sell? Well, did you happen to notice how hard Apple was recruiting new employees last week? The company had not one, but two recruiting "hospitality suites" set up to shmooze the potential talent and get them to come work at Apple. We've been to the east coast Expo every year since 1994 and we've never seen such a thing before. Now why, pray tell, would Apple be recruiting so aggressively all of a sudden-- unless it's for parts? Mwaahahahahahaha!