Ho ho ho, News.com reports heavy trading of Apple stock in the days before Christmas. On Tuesday, some four million shares got traded, which is apparently almost twice as much as average over the past three months. Unfortunately, that heavy trading appeared to be people dumping stock, as AAPL's price dropped below 13 to approach its lowest price of the last ten years. Oof.

Of course, there's always the chance that everyone's just buying stocking stuffers for the Macophiles among friends and family. (Whassamatter, dontcha believe in Christmas miracles?)

Still, we wouldn't mind waking up tomorrow, running downstairs, and finding a few shares of AAPL in our stockings... Hey Santa, are you listening? If we just get another Miracle-Thaw® we'll be sorely disappointed.

Panic! Consternation! What kind of Christmas bewitchery be this? Andrew Gore announces that MacWorld magazine's February issue will be the first to cover Windows NT, in an effort to remain "relevant to its readers."

Now, relax a sec there... after MacUser died just a few short months ago, it's easy to go off the deep end and think that MacWorld is migrating away from the Mac and that we're all doomed to a Windows future. But Andy's quick to reassure us that MacWorld's NT coverage is simply to keep us informed of ways to best integrate NT into our collective Mac experience.

But despite these reassurances, we still have one thing to say this Christmas Eve: "Thank Rudolph for MacAddict."

It seems we'll have to wait indefinitely for Apple-branded Java. "But MacOS Runtime for Java 2.0 just shipped," we hear you protest. No, we're talking about the other Apple-branded Java-- the coffee that was going to be served in the Apple Cafe. Remember that idea? Apple was going to lend its multicolored fruity ambience to a string of cybercafes, beginning with the first in L.A. Unfortunately, as news.com reports, the whole idea's been shelved.

Wait, did we say "unfortunately?" We meant to say "thankfully." I mean, really-- do we actually need still more trendy coffee-shops-with-internet-access sprout up across the world? Sure, Apple Cafes might have raised public awareness of our fave computer-maker, but it most likely would have branded Apple as "that computer-maker that went out of business and is now hawking coffee."