Statistically speaking, given how much TV your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff watches on an average day (once estimated at 26 hours per person; we've been told that there are far more important uses for our breakthrough time-dilation device, but we find that highly unlikely), when Apple starts running a new commercial, we're usually among the first to see it. Every once in a while, though, one slips by us due to circumstances beyond our control. We can't watch everything-- and don't think for a moment that we don't spend most commercial breaks fuming at the injustice of it all.

For instance, in the "real world," Katie (AtAT's resident fact-checker and Goddess of Minutiae) happens to be a lawyer, and like many of her ilk, she suffers from the dreaded "real law is nothing like that" syndrome. The result is a woeful inability to enjoy most shows featuring lawyers who actually have time to go to the bathroom (even a non-unisex one), let alone spend most evenings dancing in nightclubs and cheating on their spouses. Couple that with the fact that whenever either of us sees Calista Flockhart we're distracted by an overwhelming urge to hold her down and make her eat a sandwich, and the end result is that the AtAT staff doesn't watch Ally McBeal.

So when Apple, in its infinite wisdom, decides to debut a new ad spot during Ally instead of Buffy, we're left out of the loop; as far as we can tell, it's not up on Apple's site yet either. Fortunately, we're blessed with a viewership who can keep us abreast of these developments when events conspire to exclude us. Faithful viewer Mario Juestel was kind enough to inform us that approximately twenty minutes into the Ally season premiere (when the AtAT staff was loving Raymond-- strictly in an appropriate viewer-entertainer sort of relationship, of course), Fox aired a brand new Apple commercial advertising Mac.com email addresses. This surprise ad reportedly features "several people saying their email addresses (for example, pattib@mac.com, jason@mac.com, etc.)" and then shows "an Indigo iMac with the voiceover 'Get your own mac.com email address along with 4 million other iMac owners'" or something to that effect.

So Apple is pushing iTools on the tube, now. Good! This evidently commences the marketing direction that Steve mentioned during last week's wonderfully bleak earnings report-- namely, that Apple needs to start playing up stuff that people can do on Macs that they can't do on that "other platform." But why choose to push the free email over KidSafe, iDisk, and HomePage? A Mac.com email address isn't exactly a deal-making selling point. It's not like Wintel users can't get free email elsewhere; heck, with a little persistence and know-how, they can even get Mac.com addresses if they really want to. In any case, though, we welcome the new Mac.com commercial for two reasons: one, it heralds what we hope are a series of iTools commercials meant to tout several nice Mac-only services; and two, it means we might not be seeing that Cube commercial seven hundred times a day anymore. Guess we'll find out for sure on tonight's Buffy.

It shipped! It shipped! Xtrem finally has an actual, honest-to-goodness product out the door, instead of just hype, vague hints about future greatness, and lots of pretty 3D renderings of a big microphone. That's the good news. The bad news is that, according to faithful viewer Milo Auckerman, the product in question is not the XtremMac G4/1200 MHz that put the company in the headlines several months ago, which remains "under development" (cough). Instead, the company has finally managed to ship its other product-- the MacThrust processor accelerator.

You all remember the MacThrust, right? Or maybe you don't-- since XTrem's original August 3rd press release said that the product was going to ship "by the end of July." (Evidently we're not the only ones who are messing with time travel.) Anyway, it's finally here, and Xtrem says that after a "10-minute Plug-n-Play installation" your Power Mac G3 or Yikes!-model Power Mac G4 will run 15-35% faster, all for the low, low price of $59.95. There are a few things to keep in mind, however.

The first is that the MacThrust speeds up your Mac by forcing its G3 or G4 to run at a clock speed higher than it was intended to run, a practice known as "overclocking" that carries at least some theoretical risk of damage. Secondly, as far as we can tell, the MacThrust seems to be nothing but a bunch of conveniently labelled jumper blocks that you use to tell the motherboard how fast to run the chip. If that's indeed the case (Xtrem's web site isn't exactly brimming with details), any jumper blocks should do the trick, so $60 seems a little steep for a few tiny pieces of plastic and metal. Somehow we expected some of this incredible breakthrough cooling technology that's allegedly going to let Xtrem run a standard G4 at 1200 MHz any day now, just you wait. The last thing to remember is that pulling a stunt like overclocking your Mac's processor beyond its rated speed may not nuke the chip itself, but it will immediately and irrevocably nuke any warranty you may have-- but warranties are for wusses anyway, so who cares?

If you're out of warranty (or you're just itching for a new and exciting way to void it), you can order your $60 jumper blocks at Xtrem's award-winning web site. In theory. As of broadcast time, the Xtrem Store features a message saying that the company is "receiving so many orders" that it doesn't have "the capacity to process your order at this time." But fear not; the online store "should be available again" on October 24th, which is... uh... right now. Whoops-- guess we're seeing those time-travel anomalies again.

Apple may be currently riding some rough waves here in the States, but it looks like the Mac is on an upswing over in Germany. Yes, while we've racked up more than our fair share of viewer complaints bemoaning the awful state of the Mac market in Deutschland, evidently the karma wheel is starting to turn, because Apple Germany just reported its best year ever. (Our guess is that it's all thanks to that fake "We Love You" ad placed by Springer & Jacoby back in May. Just imagine how much better Apple would have done had they let the ad continue!)

According to MacWEEK, Apple Germany enjoyed a 62% increase in revenue last year-- and a 30% increase in the Mac customer base. Granted, Apple's share of the market is still even smaller in Germany than it is here at home, but Apple Germany's current 2.4% overall market share is undeniably less dismal than the 1.5% it had just two years ago. The progress the company's made in courting consumers is particularly encouraging: while Apple captured a mere 0.8% of the German consumer market in fiscal 1998, that number has more than quadrupled to 3.4% today.

Strangely enough, MacWEEK reports that the Cube, which has been tough to move here in the States, isn't selling well in Germany, either. We'd have figured that if any broad generalizations bordering on offensive prejudice could be made about Cube appreciation by nationality, it'd be that the German market would love its clean, minimalist lines, quiet operation, and impressive spatial engineering. It just goes to show you that racial, cultural, and national generalizations can be as inaccurate as they are hurtful-- and that price concerns transcend all boundaries. In short, the Cube is expensive and people are cheap. Isn't it great how we're all the same on the inside?