It's time to welcome the newest cast member to join Apple's little drama, folks: put your hands together for Dr. Arthur D. Levinson! Art, the CEO and chairman of Genentech Inc., is the latest addition to Apple's happy little board of directors, according to a company press release first pointed out to us by faithful viewer Porsupah. Steve himself states that he and the rest of the board "look forward to [Art's] insight and counsel" as the group prepares to take Apple to strange new levels.

AtAT sources report that Art was formally inducted in a time-honored secret hazing ceremony held deep beneath One Infinite Loop. Cowled robes, torches, and blood-oaths figured prominently (and we hear tell that Larry Ellison swings a mean paddle). Rumors that Apple board inductees must walk barefoot across a bed of blazing-hot Pentiums to demonstrate their mettle remain unsubstantiated to this day. Whatever the initiation, though, apparently Art emerged with his sanity intact and no visible scars, so we look forward to his own special contributions to the seven-member consortium whose insidious power and global influence make the Illuminati look like a Tupperware party in comparison.

So the question on everyone's lips is, why Art? Well, let's take a look at his qualifications, shall we? He's got a deep background in the hard sciences, having been at Genentech for the past twenty years in various research and management positions, eventually becoming CEO in 1995 and chairman of the board last year. His company is at the forefront of biotechnology and cranks out genetically-engineered treatments for cystic fibrosis and Hodgkin's lymphoma, among other disorders. The man has served on the editorial boards of several biotech publications and is active in a slew of scientific organizations. In short, he's Science Dude. Now, remember when Apple recruited Mickey Drexler of Gap Inc.? Obviously that was an attempt to harness Mickey's extensive knowledge of retail and consumer styling. So by extrapolation, we see two possibilities as to Art's value: either Apple is looking to strengthen its position in the science and technology sector, or, given that four of nine of Genentech's listed products are based around synthesized human growth hormone, Apple's looking to breed larger translucent computers capable of conquering puny earthlings and their pitifully primitive weapons. (Longtime viewers will have little trouble guessing which option we're leaning towards.)

By the way, word on the street is that Steve and the gang are looking to induct two more board members so they can take on Mike Dell's team in the Intercorporate Softball League, High-Tech Division. If you're a Type A personality bent on world domination with a dozen or so years of experience as the CEO of a top-flight, Fortune 500 company (and you can swing a bat like a wild ape on crystal meth), drop Steve a line at steve@mac.com. Make sure to include your batting average and ERA for your last three seasons.

First, the good news: Apple's got a new certified online reseller up and running. J & R Computer World may have a Compaq Presario uglifying up its main page, but dig a little deeper and you'll find the pretty stuff-- in J & R's brand new "Apple Store." (No, not that Apple Store; this is J & R's own online "store within a store," where customers can pop a few iMacs in the cart without having to hurt their eyes on all the Wintel crap. Would you expect anything less from the second-place winner of the "Apple Worldwide Best Store" award, Northeast U.S. Retail division? These guys even have their own toll-free Apple Sales Line. Spiffy!

On to the bad news: a couple of other online Apple resellers aren't faring quite so well. Value America is on the skids in the worst way-- meaning, someone hum the Bankruptcy Dirge, because according to MacCentral (and Value America's own home page), the online retailer has closed up shop, leaving scads of iMac buyers in the lurch. Orders which shipped by last Friday the 11th will be honored, but others will not. Details on what becomes of those unfulfilled orders are supposedly coming "later this week." Apparently several people who ordered iMacs but never received them are trying to figure out how to get their money back now that the company has ducked under the Chapter 11 umbrella. (Isn't it illegal to charge a credit card for an order before the merchandise ships? Seems to us we've heard that somewhere before.) Value America approached AtAT about buying some advertising banners not very long ago, but never got back to us to close the deal. Sounds like we dodged a bullet.

In news that hits closer to AtAT's home, MacCentral also reports that longtime Apple authorized dealer Computer Town may be in "financial trouble." Sources claim that the company has laid off forty people following a "financial meltdown" stemming from a "very confusing" problem that happened sometime within the past few months. Rumor has it that Computer Town was "bilked out of some money," leading to a cash flow crisis of near-biblical proportions. The massive layoffs apparently included just about everyone capable of picking up a phone, because phone calls to the company just keep on ringing.

So, one up, and (maybe) two down. Hopefully Computer Town will pull through whatever ickiness is currently infecting its credit line, but Value America is gone, gone, gone. Not that there aren't still plenty of online resellers perfectly willing to sell you a Mac, but we always find it a little sad when an Apple reseller goes under. Still, it's the cycle of life, you know?

Surely we're not the only ones who feel bilked by all those visions of the future that turned out to be hideously and egregiously wrong. When we were kids, the year 2000 was supposed to be this high-tech utopia with everyone wearing matching shiny silver suits with the big "V" on the chest. The wheel would be a laughably primitive concept long gone from the culture's memory. The idea of sitting down to eat a meal of actual food would also be obsolete. Well, here we are in the year 2000, and what have we got? No flying cars, no meal-in-a-pill, and instead of silver V-chested suits we've got Old Navy Performance Fleece. What's up with that?

As it turns out, Apple's vision of the future was a lot closer than most people's. Fly on the Mac posted a cool eight-page Apple print ad from 1988, and while it's a retro kick reading about all of the great high-end features available in the Macs of the era (like hard disks-- "Apple offers six different models with up to 80 MB of storage"), the really spooky stuff is in the predictions for the future. For instance, under a photo of a CD-ROM drive that looks like it's roughly the size of a Buick sedan, Apple states: "CD-ROM is the future of information storage. And Apple has it now." Prescient, no? Only slightly less accurate is the copy about the Macintosh desktop: "Thousands of improvements later, the desktop still looks familiar. So if you learn one Macintosh, you've learned them all. Even those we haven't invented yet." Hey, it's true at least through today; we'll have to wait and see whether that applies to Mac OS X or not.

But here's where Apple got seriously Nostradamus on our heads: the last page of the ad is dedicated to the "Macintosh computer of the future." Apple didn't make any outlandish flying-cars-style predictions-- "It probably won't fit in your wallet, hover in mid-air or come when you call it." (Darn.) Instead, "it will likely bear a striking similarity to the Macintosh of today. Except it will let you do things you've never done before. Desktop video, for example. Imagine being able to create and edit multimedia presentations as elaborate as a Super Bowl halftime show without leaving your desk. We're working on it." Well, it took eleven years, but that sure sounds like iMovie to us.

Above that fateful prediction is a picture of "The Knowledge Navigator™," Apple's concept for a future Mac that features larger, more realistic icons (Aqua, anyone?), a live video image, and a window showing live news headlines from around the globe. Okay, so it also appears to be a sort of folding book with a built-in video camera-- plus it's beige, but hey, everyone's entitled to go a little Criswell now and again. And who's to say that future PowerBooks won't include a camera, fold right through the middle of the screen, and ship without a keyboard? That's the nice thing about the future-- it's always "coming soon."