Despite some encouraging progress on the delivery front, a few of the shiny new Macs announced at the Expo continue to be a little tricky to grab. The Cube, in particular, presents a challenge; some viewers report that their local dealers will have them in stock "any day now" and ready to unload on people willing to drop $1799 on the world's first gigaflop tissue box, while others bemoan their order's ever-increasing lead time from the Apple Store. (The current reported estimated ship date for new Cube orders is three weeks.) None of the major online resellers lists them as being in stock. We admit that, despite having seen several Cubes in person a few weeks ago, we were starting to think the whole thing was just an elaborate hoax or a dream sequence or something. But we see no reason to doubt faithful viewer Jesus Diaz when he claims to have written to us from his very own Cube-- in Spain. So they are out there, but you might have to drive a bit farther than you thought to pick one up.

Today, though, new information has surfaced that may help us improve matters drastically. As a MacInTouch reader reports, when he called Apple to check on the status of his late Cube 500, he was told that the computer itself "is in ample stock." Yes, apparently there are scores of 500 MHz Cubes lining Apple's shelves, just waiting to bring their own hexahedral brand of lovin' into the homes and offices of the faithful. So why can't Apple ship them? Get this: "it's the mouse and keyboard that are not ready for delivery." Curses-- hobbled by the Pro Mouse! Which means that if you're currently freaking out because your Cube is late, you can blame Steve Jobs for giving away those four thousand or so transparent little rodents to lucky keynote-attending bastards like us. That's right; Apple's still got your Cube because we've got your mouse.

But before you come over and beat us silly, there are a couple of things we'd like to bring to your attention. First of all, Apple's saying that it'll only be "four to seven days" before they have enough keyboards and mice to ship the first Apple Store orders. If that sounds like a long time, you're not thinking in the Jobsian scheme of things. Secondly, even if you came over and took our mouse, we can't help you on the keyboard front-- Steve was too cheap to give us one of those, too. So you'd still be waiting the same length of time. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we think we may have come up with a better way for you to ensure that Apple gets its next batch of input devices done on time.

We were poking around the 'net and stumbled across a Newsweek article about the Cube and its see-through accessories. Reportedly, "entire teams of engineers had to work on its specially molded plastic, going with an optical-grade polymer that would resist scratches and modulate the way light would refract through its surface." Clearly (um, make that "obviously") the hold-up is due to a shortage of this optical-grade polymer; Apple had enough to finish the Cubes themselves, but ran out when it was time to make the keyboards and mice. Now, who's hogging all the polymer? The eyeglass industry, of course. So if you really want to speed up your Cube order, while AtAT certainly can't condone any sort of illegal activity, you might consider some "creative" ways to dissuade customers from patronizing your local LensCrafters...

As a general rule, we like to keep everyday politics well away from AtAT's complex and interweaving plotlines. Dramatic and explicitly Apple-related stuff like Steve Jobs's covert plans to control the world's Tang resources is okay, but we shy away from even something as mundane as White House extramarital indiscretions; despite the subject's overt soap opera qualities, it's just been done to death, and frankly we can't find it particularly theatrical. In fact, we dug through the Reruns and turned up only three uses of the name "Lewinsky" in as many years (well, okay, now it's four), and it was always invoked with the greatest sense of tact and taste-- the use of the term "Tinky-Winky" notwithstanding.

But every once in a while, something political happens that is related to Apple, and thus we feel compelled to work it into the script. Faithful viewer Reiza Ali tipped us off to the actions of two activist groups, the Rainforest Action Network and The Ruckus Society, who sought to protest "corporate influence" on the U.S. political process by hanging a 1500-square-foot banner on the side of the Hotel Figueroa. According to a Channel 2000 story, the banner was a "giant U.S. flag with corporate logos where stars should have been, and with the word 'Sold' stamped across it."

How does this involve Apple? Well, as it turns out, the flag was "flanked by huge images of the nation's Democratic heroes... as part of a way to welcome the DNC, and part of Apple Computer's 'Think Different' campaign." So as these scrappy protesters scaled the hotel and unfurled their banner, the images of "Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy and Cesar Chavez, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt" looked on. Our seance hat's at the shop, so none of the Democratic heroes could be reached for comment, but we like to think that at least King and Chavez might have approved.

Steve, on the other hand, may have felt otherwise. It's one thing to get arrested by Los Angeles cops, and it's another to alienate the entire Democratic party-- but provoking the Wrath of Steve is a whole different caliber of danger. (Just ask ATI.) So, despite being "The Man" now, hopefully the different-thinking Steve is still rebellious enough in nature to sympathize with what the protesters hoped to achieve, instead of being angry at those crazy kids who upstaged his ad campaign. Heck, we think it'd be really interesting if Apple scrambled to add one more giant poster to the area-- a reproduction of the protest banner, with the words "Think different" discreetly added. It'd never happen, but wouldn't it be a hoot?

Today's quickie: faithful viewers Jerry O'Neil and Russell Maggio both pointed out an article in The Register which proves that corporate subtlety is alive and well. Our former Paragon of Tact was none other than Michael Dell, whose October '97 public comment that if he were in charge of Apple he'd "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders" reigned for nearly three solid years. But sadly, now Mike's got to turn the crown over to Thom Duncan, a senior editor over at Novell's DeveloperNet. Thom definitely went one better than Mike's catty comment: he actually posted a clear, well-thought-out, public web page explaining why Windows is just like his infected gall bladder.

Sound like a far-fetched comparison? Not at all! Take, for instance, the fact that Thom's ailing gall bladder is both tiny ("micro") and soft (um, "soft"). And that's just for starters: "What does the gall bladder do? No one knows for sure. The same with Windows." More to the point, when the gall bladder is "removed, the body works perfectly fine without it." And there's an even more startling similarity: the gall bladder apparently "makes you throw up." After having spent five hours in Windows Hell a week ago (followed by five minutes, er, "recycling breakfast"), we can attest to the truth of that similarity ourselves. (Okay, so we didn't actually vomit. If we had been using an honest-to-badness Wintel box instead of VirtualPC, though, we probably would have.)

But the most incredible coincidence of all is this-- when comparing Windows to a diseased gall bladder, one truth becomes painfully self-evident: "They're both sacks of bile." Say no more, Thom-- we're convinced. And congratulations on becoming the new AtAT Paragon of Tact; someone's going to have to work pretty hard to unseat you from your lofty station. We doubt anything short of a fully-nude public spectacle in which a CEO issues a curse-laden diatribe against the competition could suffice.