It's off, it's on, it's off again, it's on again-- the official Apple webcast of the upcoming Macworld Tokyo Stevenote has been flip-flopped so many times, we're starting to think that Apple is sending a secret message to Steve's home planet in really slow Morse code. First Apple was making those same noises we all remember from past years, about how a live Tokyo webcast would be "cost-prohibitive." (In other words, forget about it.) But then last week, some enterprising web-combers fired up their virtual metal detectors and struck pay dirt: an unlinked, unpublicized page on Apple's own site with information about a QuickTime Streaming webcast of Steve's imminent speaking gig. That, of course, raised the hopes of those of us who can't go jetting off to Japan every time some mercurial guy in a turtleneck needs to tells us "one more thing." Unfortunately, that hope was short-lived, because soon after word got out about the hidden page, the mothership yanked it from its servers so quickly we swear we heard a pop when Apple broke the sound barrier.

But guess what? As faithful viewer David Triska notes, it's baaa-aack, and this time it looks like it might be here to stay. At least, we hope it's here to stay, though there's still no link to the page on Apple's "QuickTime Hot Picks" list-- so maybe it'll vanish again when Apple starts the third letter in its interstellar Morse transmission. In any case, keep your fingers crossed and maybe the webcast will still be officially "on" during the actual event itself. We'll know soon enough, since Steve's due to take the stage at 10 AM Tokyo time on Thursday the 22nd (which translates to 8PM EST tomorrow night, we think).

Oops-- actually, never mind. We just took a closer look at Apple's keynote webcast page to verify the broadcast time, and noticed that none is given. That's when the important phrase "video-on-demand archive" finally sunk in. So you can apparently forget about an Apple-served live Stevenote webcast; instead we're going to have to wait until Steve's done talking and Apple's A/V elves encode the tapes and post the files to apple.com. So much for instant gratification. Bummer. We suppose it's just as well, though; we were having enough trouble trying to decide between reruns of "That '70s Show" and "Ed" without having a live Stevenote in there interfering with our strict TV-watching regimen.

Actually, we might as well admit it: no matter how much rationalizing we do about the quality and breadth of tomorrow night's prime-time line-up, we are a mite disappointed that we aren't going to be able to witness the Macworld Expo Tokyo keynote live. Partially it's just that anything starring Steve-- even a smeary, pixellated Steve-- is a guaranteed rollicking good time. Partially it's that, as studies have proven conclusively time and time again, Reality Distortion Field energy is physically addictive, and the buzz from last month's San Francisco gig has just about worn off. But mostly it's that we like to be either tuned in or standing there live whenever Proud Poppa takes the wraps off a new batch of Macs.

What's that? Some of you are still skeptical that new gear will see the light of day in less than thirty-six hours? Good gravy, people, even Dana Scully eventually came around to believing in aliens when confronted with seven or eight years' worth of pretty compelling evidence. We've covered this ground before. But if the mountain of existing clues isn't enough to convince you that, at the very least, iMacs with CD-RW drives are being polished for their imminent debut even as you shake your head in obstinate doubt, perhaps we can toss one more teensy little scrap of evidence on the pile: Apple said so.

Well, okay, no, Apple didn't quite say so-- there wasn't an official press release or anything-- but according to The Register, an official company representative dropped some pretty substantial hints. In an interview with the Irish Times last week, Apple's European Education Director Brendan O'Sullivan reportedly stated point-blank that "Apple will introduce several new products at Macworld in Tokyo next week." Is that straightforward enough for you? Oh, sure, you could argue that the European Education Director isn't necessarily high enough in the pecking order to know what Steve's got up his sleeves, but we'd consider that reaching, at best. Face it; in a matter of hours, a packed house in Tokyo is going to be drooling over some shiny new Macs.

As for what those Macs turn out to be, well, the CD-RW iMac is just a heavily-informed guess. But Mr. O'Sullivan made another interesting remark: "We will keep innovating with portable products such as the iBook." We're still undecided about whether or not we should take that comment (in conjunction with the statement about "several new products") to mean that a revised iBook is waiting in the wings in Tokyo; we're inclined to say no, although The Register claims that, yes, a slimmer, lighter iBook with a 13-inch screen and a 100 MHz system bus is in the cards. We'll reserve our doubt for that little detail, but we're completely and utterly expecting something new tomorrow night-- and we're not talking about Regis's little show.

Okay, so Mac OS Rumors contains a bit of speculation about "Apple's answer to Xbox," the upcoming gaming console that's just one more physical manifestation of Microsoft's obsessive need to own every market it can get its tentacles around. The thing hasn't even shipped yet, and people are already proclaiming it the demise of the Playstation 2. The Redmond Beast is sinking so many resources into guaranteeing Xbox's success that it's even gone so far as to subvert and then purchase formerly Mac-software mavens Bungie-- a defection from which the AtAT staff still hasn't fully recovered.

So according to Microsoft, games are big, and the Xbox is the future of gaming. Meanwhile, gaming on the Macintosh is arguably improving-- at least we're getting more and more of the big titles ported over, though it still takes a while-- but no one's making any claims that hardcore gamers are better off getting a Mac than a tricked-out Wintel or a dedicated console system. With the coming advent of the Xbox, Microsoft seems to think that consoles are eventually going to win. The question is, should Apple go after a slice of the console pie? If Larry Ellison's right about Apple becoming a "digital appliance" provider and competing head-to-head with Sony, isn't an Apple-branded game console a natural piece of the puzzle?

Well, MOSR claims that Apple is indeed working on just such a device: a cheap, stripped-down Mac with super-beefy graphics performance. Whether or not that's true, we're not sure whether or not that's wise. Does anybody remember the PiPPiN? Apple has gotten its butt kicked all over the room in this fight before. While we'd love to see a "gMac" console that could really compete squarely with the Xbox and the Playstation 2 (not to mention Nintendo's upcoming PowerPC-based GAMECUBE), somehow we doubt that Apple has the resources to leap into that free-for-all without emerging bloody, battered, and missing a couple of limbs.

However, if Apple were to attempt something like that, we'd we'd like to see is a "gMac" whose base circuitry is incorporated into every shipping Macintosh. Pair that with a gracefully degrading game API, and we'd imagine that developers could write games that play perfectly well on a $199 gMac-- but that also play on fuller-featured and more expensive portable and desktop Macs. Moreover, the feature sets of those very same games could scale up on a full-fledged Mac, to allow local storage of game data on the hard drive, use of a LAN and/or Internet connection for network play, higher-resolution gameplay on a Mac's display versus a TV screen, etc. Hey, it could happen. But a deal with Nintendo to build GAMECUBE functionality into every Mac might possibly be more realistic...