Uh-oh... Cue the ominous music and cut to a commercial, because given the current mood surrounding Apple (what with the earnings warnings and the slack sales), every little organizational change takes on a whole world of significance. For instance, didn't it seem awfully convenient that less than two weeks after Apple broke the bad news on the earnings front, senior veep of worldwide sales Mitch Mandich announced his intent to retire at the end of the year? Sure, it might have been a coincidence. And Bill Gates might shave his head, paint himself purple, and win the role of the bunch of grapes in the cast for the new Fruit of the Loom commercials. We're just not counting on it, is all.

Once you shake that visual from your head, consider the latest shake-up over in the halls of Cupertino; faithful viewer Jens Baumeister informs us that, hot on the heels of Mandich's "retirement," Apple's veep of marketing communication Steve Wilhite has just turned in his notice. According to a MacWEEK article, "Apple did not state a reason for his departure," which, in light of recent events, makes us think that Wilhite "resigned" in much the same sense as Gil Amelio "resigned." We sense that Big Steve wasn't pleased with Little Steve's inability to keep the public buying Macs at the furious pace which Big Steve's scheme for world domination demands.

Of course, the other possibility is that Wilhite didn't walk the plank, but instead jumped ship of his own accord. That could mean one of two things, speculatively speaking. The first is that he's a rat scurrying to get off a sinking ship. This is the obvious interpretation, and the one that we figure is probably going to dominate the news reports and analyst commentary: Wilhite knows something about Apple's condition that the rest of us don't, and he's getting out while the getting's good. We fully expect Apple's stock to take yet another kick in the teeth once the rumors make the rounds.

The other possibility, though, is that Wilhite is the kind of guy who sees his duty, helps the downtrodden, and then moves on. (You know, like Caine in "Kung Fu." Or maybe more like Bruce Banner in "The Incredible Hulk.") Remember, he was the big cheese over in Volkswagen's marketing department and revived the sagging company with his startlingly effective ad campaigns for the New Beetle... at which point he bailed on VW and signed on with Apple. So perhaps he's confident that Apple now has the infrastructure in place to market the bejeezus out of the upcoming G4 PowerBooks, faster Power Macs, and Mac OS X and has left to help another company in need.

Then there's the Thanksgiving-apropo interpretation of Wilhite's departure: he couldn't stand the heat of reporting directly to Steve and got the heck out of the kitchen. Here's hoping Chef Steve's got something yummy in the oven, because without veeps of sales or marketing, it's going to take more than an Unturkey with all the trimmings to jumpstart Apple's sales again.

Leave it to Apple's web lackeys to spoil our fun. Yesterday we passed on the interesting little tidbit that Jeff Goldblum's iTools home page (whose URL is clearly visible in the new "Internet Gift" commercial) contained a couple of puzzling pages. One was an iMovie page just like the one Jeff demonstrates in the commercial-- except in the ad the movie actually works, whereas in real life, not so much. the other was a photo album page with the cryptic title of "Dog Face," which led to all sorts of fun speculation.

Unfortunately, possibly due to our mention of these bizarre little quirks, Mr. Goldblum's home page abruptly changed in the middle of the day yesterday. Faithful viewer Joe tipped us off that the "Dog Face" page had been altered, either by Jeff himself or (more likely) Apple's web staff. The "Dog Face" title is now gone, replaced with the far less entertaining heading of "The Shoot." Lots of the extraneous photos have been deleted, and now there are just four stills of Jeff himself from the commercial.

In addition to the questionable move to eliminate any and all baffling references to canine visages, somebody also tried to fix the main thrust of the page-- the iMovie. Unfortunately, we say "tried," because while yesterday the page referenced a completely invalid file location, now it references a real file-- but still fails to serve it as QuickTime, so the effect is the same: a broken plug-in icon that really doesn't look very good since one of the major points of the "Internet Gift" commercial is that Apple makes it so easy to post your iMovies for everyone to see. Whoops!

However, if you're all worked up about missing Jeff's iMovie, keep your pants on. First of all, you're not missing much. Second of all, thanks to faithful viewer David Triska, you can still view the footage if you're willing to invest a modicum of effort to fix Apple's mistake. First, use this link to save the 4 MB movie to your hard drive by using the "Save As Source" feature of your browser of choice. (For instance, in Netscape, click and hold on the link, choose "Save this Link as..." and choose "Source" from the pop-up menu in the resulting Save dialog.) Once you've got the source file, use something like File Buddy or SetItsType to change the file's type and creator codes to "Moov" and "TVOD" respectively. Now you've got a QuickTime movie of Jeff Goldblum jumping around in the big white room. Happy? Sure, it's no "Dog Face," but sometimes you have to be thankful for whatever entertainment you can get.

For those unfamiliar with the bizarre rituals of the United States, the reason you're probably mourning the dearth of news in the Apple world today is because we yanks are all taking the day off to celebrate a holiday called Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the day on which we, surprisingly enough, give thanks-- you know, for all the great stuff we have and take for granted the other 364.25 days of the year, like the fact that we aren't the targets of genocide, no one's giving us horrible diseases, stealing our land, and eradicating our culture, stuff like that. As a nation, we traditionally do this in a perfectly obvious way: by gutting, roasting, and devouring a large bird, and then fighting off the resulting turkey coma by watching lots of football and screaming at our relatives for ruining our lives.

However, since the AtAT staff eats no turkey, dislikes football, and sagely lives far enough from the relatives who ruined our lives that the screaming has to be limited due to excessive long-distance charges, we generally just like to celebrate the day by reflecting on all the wonderful stuff that makes our lives better. You know, stuff like Buffy, Ghostwriter reruns on Noggin, fast-food Chana Masala at the mall, Tater Tots in the new resealable bag, having the golden touch when it comes to making pie crust, and a viewing audience who loves us unconditionally. Oh, and our Macs.

Yes, we give thanks for our Macs. We love the ease of use that's letting us produce and broadcast this show from our very own home. We love AirPort, which allows us to work and play with high-speed Internet access from our rightful places on the couch. We love the Mac's "keeps on tickin'" quality, which enables us to broadcast AtAT from a five-year-old Power Mac 7500 with a G3 upgrade at its heart. We love that, even if we have to spend several hours in Windows Hell each and every workday, at least the Macs are waiting for us every night, with friendly faces and trouble-free operation.

If you haven't taken the time to appreciate just how much better your life is because of your Mac, this is a perfect time to do so. Rejoice! Since you chose a Mac instead of some Wintel thing, you don't have to deal with Registry corruption. Your onscreen fonts aren't so ugly that every time you look at them, a little part of you dies. Your primary troubleshooting action isn't a complete reinstallation of what you jokingly refer to as your "operating system" at the first hint of danger. You don't have to experience infuriating DLL weirdness like your mouse suddenly not working because you installed a new game. You can plug and play instead of plug and pray. And the future of your platform rests in the hands of a guy who wears jeans and black turtlenecks instead of a dorky blue sweater. Sure, Macs aren't perfect, but they're loads better than the alternative... so be thankful, and get happy! And thank you for tuning in.