Everybody knows that Apple has secret underground labs in which legions of scientists are busily trying to reverse-engineer Steve's Reality Distortion Field, right? Well, several highly-placed AtAT sources have risked life, limb, and stock options (not that they're worth all that much right now) to tell us that the project entered a new research phase last week-- and that Apple's earnings warning and the resulting "Black Friday" stock tailspin are merely factors in that experiment. It seems that in order to reproduce Steve's infamous mind-bending energy field in a lab environment, the Poindexters need more data on RDF energy's maximum output effectiveness. How far can Steve push his powers to make bad news sound good? In other words, what's his Spin Quotient?

The first attempt to spin the carefully-planned earnings shortfall met with the expected results: Wall Street reacted to Steve's press release claim that the sales slowdown was merely a "speedbump" by slashing the value of AAPL over 60% in mere days. Clearly the weakened effectiveness of RDF energy transmitted via the written word was wholly unable to spin the earnings warning to Apple's benefit. The next test? Spin delivered live and in person, by Steve himself, as the iCEO addressed his demoralized minions last Friday morning.

Faithful viewer Joshua pointed out that ZDNet covered the experiment, though the media was unaware of the true significance of the company-wide meeting, and therefore focused on relatively trivial matters. It's true that Steve declared that Apple has no plans for layoffs and will replace any departing employees. It's also true that a hiring freeze for most currently open positions has been instituted until Apple's operating expenses are under better control, and that certain "nonessential projects" may be scaled back. And Steve did blame the company's shortfall on slow Cube sales, a "slump in education channels," and failure to get products released in a timely manner. However, it's important to keep in mind that all of these details are merely test variables in a larger RDF test plan. Apple's white-coats monitored the employees' reactions to each delivered fact from behind one-way mirrors, while correlating the audience response to Steve's delivered RDF volume. (Those employees who were unfortunate enough to have glimpsed the electrodes on the back of Steve's neck were led away and "re-educated" over the weekend.)

Sources claim that Apple's RDF Research Facility should have all the data it needs to proceed with its work by the time Apple is scheduled to post its quarterly results on the 18th, though its possible that Apple's "recovery" may be postponed a while longer for follow-up study. If the project is successful, then future Apple products and advertising may soon be imbued with artificially-created, non-Steve-originated RDF energy to sway consumer purchasing decisions. You can bet we won't see much "sales softness" after that.

It may sound crazy, but there just isn't much going on in the Mac world right now. The whole community is apparently recuperating in a numb coma following last week's financial hysterics, and the result appears to be a post-Expo-like lull in the action. So, logically, this is the ideal time to whine about air travel. Makes perfect sense, right?

We needn't recount the details of Katie's recent flight from Boston to Seattle, because we can probably sum up the entire frustrating experience in two words: United Airlines. Not that we have anything in particular against that beleaguered company, but most people are aware that it just so happens to lead the industry in such dubious areas as delays and cancelled flights. Now, if you were running an airline and your customers are increasingly disgruntled at having to sit around in the fluorescent lights of airports, scavenging meager and questionable nutrition from snack bar comestibles, and bathing with a series of individually-wrapped moist towelettes, what would you do?

If you said "find out why so many flights and delayed and/or cancelled and fix the problem, thus restoring a happy and well-rested clientele," you are clearly not fit to run an airline. The correct answer, according to United (and CNET, who reported the story), is to provide wireless Internet access for all those borderline-postal airport refugees. After all, if you're unwashed, living on vending machine pretzels, and the last time you slept was the ten minutes you managed to snatch on the connecting flight before the flight attendant clocked you on the elbow with the drink cart, you're probably going to be in the perfect mood to do a little online day-trading. Or at least you can post your manifesto to your home page before you grab a swizzle stick from the bar and try to kill as many people as you can before you're overpowered.

So, while the bad news is that you'll still be stuck on the ground, the good news is that you'll be able to surf while you wait via the magic of AirPort. (The wireless networking technology, we mean, not the big ugly place that sucks souls dry. See, Apple named it that for a reason!) United's partnering with Aerzone, who reportedly uses that good ol' industry standard known as 802.11, so AirPort-equipped PowerBooks and iBooks will be able to use the service just fine. Unfortunately, it seems that United is planning on charging its customers for the privilege of emailing its complaints wirelessly, but hey, nothing's perfect. But if you've ever been stranded at an airport, surely you knew that already.

Adding insult to injury is never a nice thing to do, even if the injury in question is really small. Did we say "small"? Make that "tiny." Personally, we never understood all the hubbub about how the four new keys on Apple's Pro Keyboard-- Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute, and Media Eject-- don't work on older Macs. Isn't something like that to be expected? In any event, some people made a big deal about it, including Apple. The company actually cancelled people's orders for the shiny new input device just because those four nifty-but-hardly-crucial keys were nonfunctional on all but the very latest Macs. Funny, we'd have thought that most people who ordered the Pro Keyboard did so to get a full set of standard keys, including a keypad and full-height cursor and function keys. Did anyone really buy one for the one-key Mute function?

In any case, here's where the "insult" part comes into play: according to MacWindows, if you hook up one of those Pro Keyboards to a USB-equipped PC running Windows 98 Second Edition, three of those four special keys work. Think about that for a second. Your Strawberry iMac DV? No go. That single-processor Power Mac G4/500 you bought in June? Out of luck. But plug your Pro Keyboard into some Dell or Compaq box which isn't even running the very latest operating system out of Redmond, and suddenly you can Volume Up, Volume Down, and Mute 'til your fingers bleed. (At least the Media Eject key apparently doesn't work.)

Sure, owners of older Macs can grab the "USB Device Driver" file off of a friend's new system as an unsanctioned but functional fix, or just download the latest beta from Apple's site. But "officially," as a community we're supposed to wait until "early 2001" for a software fix-- while Windows users get 75% new key support in an operating system released last year. Again, it's such a minor issue, it hardly seems worth getting into a foaming tirade about-- but we really hope that Windows supporting Apple hardware better than Apple does isn't the start of a disturbing trend.