Now who says politics is boring? Here we were, thinking we'd have to incorporate the U.S. presidential election into our little show purely from an Apple-centric point of view in order to mine any drama from the proceedings, when in fact the event turned out to be a rollicking edge-of-your-seat soap opera in its own right. In fact, the number of plot twists and surprise revelations frankly put our own dramatic efforts to shame. Truth is stranger than fiction, and by extension, evidently the U.S. political system is weirder than TV.

So as Steve Jobs sat idly by, refusing to throw his hat into the ring and become an eleventh-hour independent candidate ("A Vote For Steve Is A Vote For Anarchy!"), he watched his horse-- er, donkey-- run neck and neck with the other guy. While we were unavoidably prevented from watching the early returns (who scheduled an election on Buffy night? It's called scheduling, people!), the AtAT staff tuned in at 10 PM EST after having caught snippets of the ballot-counting during commercial breaks. Let's talk about the goofy plot twists that had America chewing its collective nails to the quick, shall we?

Pretty much all the craziness happened in Florida. (Many of you are not surprised.) While the results were agonizingly close all over the nation, the race in Florida contained a truly inspired level of melodrama. First all major networks declared Florida an Algor state, based on exit poll results. Then each network eventually rescinded the Gore designation, as the vote tally clearly showed Dubya up by a solid five percentage points-- not much, but certainly not the kind of results that show Gore to be a dead lock. By the time we dragged our sleep-deprived butts to bed in the wee hours, Florida had yet to be decided, still labeled "too close to call" with Bush and Gore separated by a mere two percentage points-- but by then it was pretty clear that whoever claimed Florida, claimed the nation.

Okay, here's where things got absolutely zany. We're told that at around 2:30 AM, the networks finally declared Bush the winner in Florida. Gore even called Bush to congratulate him on his victory. But at around 4:30 AM, the networks took back Florida again, dropping it back in the "too close to call" category. So Gore called Bush once more and took back his congratulations-- and Bush's response reportedly prompted Gore to say something about not getting "snippy." Tsk, tsk-- c'mon, guys, lack of sleep is no excuse for poor manners.

As for the factors that contributed to Florida's yo-yo behavior (Gore / Too Close To Call / Bush / Too Close To Call...), they were strokes of dramatic genius in and of themselves. First of all, there was the missing truck. Apparently an entire truck full of Florida ballots simply never showed up at the counting place, and was missing for most of the night (though apparently as of this morning it had been found). Suspicious enough for you? No? Well, then perhaps you'll appreciate the Ananova story that Paula Cuccurullo and Gordon Anderson forwarded us from overseas; apparently the Florida ballots used in Palm Beach County were confusing and may have led some voters who thought they were voting for Gore to vote instead for-- get this-- Pat Buchanan. Reportedly "the form spread over two pages and Mr Gore's name and punch-hole were on separate sheets." Now there's a problem. And given Buchanan's suspiciously high tally in that county and the closeness of the race, it's apparently quite possible that Gore, Steve Jobs's "candidate of choice," will lose the election because of a poorly-designed ballot form.

At broadcast time, the country still doesn't know for sure who won-- last we heard, Gore won the popular vote (which, constitutionally speaking, means squat-- that and $799 will get Gore an iMac), while Bush was ahead in the Florida recounts by some piddly amount, like 200 to 1500 votes, which will likely secure him a spot in the White House. For his own sake, hopefully Ralph Nader is staying indoors and away from the windows right about now. In any event, we figure the big winners this election are those of us who thrive on a steady diet of melodrama-- especially given this Apple lull. At least, relief!

Aside from Steve Jobs's infuriating decision not to run and his public endorsement of Algor for President and CEO of U.S.A. Inc., there was one other overt Apple connection to the election coverage: a brand spankin' new Apple commercial which took the whole Mac-using community by surprise. At first we thought we might have imagined it, what with sleep-deprivation-related hallucinations being somewhat commonplace around the AtAT studios, but after seeing it, oh, five or six times in one night (and receiving independent confirmation from a couple of faithful viewers), we decided that it was in fact a real thing.

Part of the reason we weren't sure was because this latest commercial welcomes Jeff Goldblum back to his traditional role as iMac spokesperson. Those of you who aren't Goldblum fans are probably cursing the end of the actors' strike right about now, but trust us, it's probably a great thing that Jeff's back and hawking Macs. Remember how well Apple did when the first Goldblum ads were in rotation? Okay, now consider Apple's performance after the last round of Jeffless commercials for the new iMacs and the Cube: iMac sales are slow, and Cube sales are abysmal. It's all about the Jeff, people!

As for the commercial itself, just as with the recent "Mac.com" ad, Apple continues to try and focus on the real things you can do with an iMac instead of the fact that it happens to look gorgeous. This time around, Mr. Goldblum describes all the cool video editing that normal people can do with a digital camcorder and an iMac powered by iMovie 2. While it's a little "blah" for our tastes (oooh, you can speed footage up, slow it down, and add music! Stop, you're killing us with excitement!) and is at least mildly misleading (Jeff says you need an "iMac," not an "iMac DV," so we wonder how many people will buy the $799 dealie for video editing only to discover that they should have read the fine print), it's a decent effort. Although we would have liked to see more of iMovie's "gee-whiz" features like transitions and titles, plus some clarification that once you're done, you can send the footage back out to the camera and thence to tape; the commercial implies that you just watch your edited footage on the iMac's screen, which isn't nearly as interesting.

Anyway, it's a new Apple ad, and it's in heavy rotation, so let's see how it performs. At last check, Apple still hadn't posted a QuickTime version to the Ads page, but we expect that'll change later today. And if not, don't worry-- watch NBC for eight or ten seconds and you'll probably see it live and in person. Here's hoping that Apple finds a happy holiday buying season under the tree next month...

Believe it or not, some people actually criticize Apple's products sometimes. Really, it's true! As hard as it is to imagine, we've heard real, honest-to-goodness people complain aloud that Macs are too expensive. We've heard others say that Macs don't ship with enough RAM. Honestly! We can't think of a single reason why these people would say such things, other than the fact that they're pretty much true. (Like that's any excuse.)

Well, fortunately, it sounds like Apple's listening to the grumbling and making at least tentative moves to appease the complainers. A few weeks ago the company introduced a $200 mail-in rebate for any PowerBook purchase by the end of the year, thus alleviating the massive price gap between the low-end PowerBook and the iBook Special Edition. At the same time, a $300 Cube rebate went into effect, provided that the Cube is purchased with a matching Apple display; hopefully that'll help spruce up the Cube's lackluster sales performance.

But with Apple's latest promotion, the company's killing two gripes with one rebate. Sort of. Under the "It pays to get more RAM" promotion (ugh), build-to-order Macs configured and purchased via the Apple Store will qualify for a rebate equal to a buck for every MB of RAM added. Add 64 MB of RAM, get $64 back by mail. Add 512 MB, get $512. Neat, right? Of course, you'd save even more money by purchasing and installing third-party RAM yourself (and you'd probably get a lifetime warranty instead of just one year), but hey, it's still an improvement. Buy! Buy! BUY!