Breathe easy, PowerBook G4 owners; despite the events that unfolded on Friday night when a bomb scare shut down Burbank Airport for six hours, your titanium buddy is not an explosive hazard after all. And it's a darn good thing, too-- do you realize how tough it is to acquire a decent bomb suit as a civilian? Even eBay (which rarely lets us down) only has bomb squad t-shirts, hats, and patches-- none of which sound like they offer much protection.

In fact, now you can relax still further, because it's come to our attention that trying to push your PowerBook through airport security will generally not get you tossed into a holding cell at gunpoint and interrogated about recent terrorist activities. As it turns out, it wasn't even titanium residue that caused Friday's false-positive bomb test and ensuing ruckus, as previously suspected; according to a revised LA Times article we found by way of The Register, it wasn't the PowerBook that failed the swab test, but rather the bag in which it was carried, which "contained residue of a chemical commonly used to make explosives." Furthermore, "authorities ruled out initial suspicions that titanium in the laptop had triggered the false reading."

The moral of the story, kids, is that if you want to avoid embarrassing hold-ups at the airport, never mix your explosives in your PowerBook's bag, even if all your mixing bowls are dirty. Do the frickin' dishes and make your bombs right; using your laptop case as a makeshift explosive-mixing container may seem like a clever time-saving strategy, but you're just going to lose time in the long run when you get detained by the FBI. (We'd love to hear the "plausible explanation" of how the chemical residue got in the man's bag in the first place, but sadly, it's not included.)

Further travel tips extracted from this whole mess: for one thing, it's evidently unwise to try to get through an airport security checkpoint while stinking drunk and still clutching a bottle of vodka. Reportedly the guy was "not in a normal state to participate in questioning," which undoubtedly slowed things down a little. Oh, and "household items such as garden fertilizer or gasoline can trigger false alarms indicating chemical residue," so it's probably best to stop using your TiBook as a makeshift spade, and we recommend using an approved gas can to transport your gasoline instead of just pouring it in your laptop case. Following these simple guidelines will get you on that plane in no time, and once you're airborne, you can use your 'Book to your heart's content-- bomb suit optional.

Oh, it's so tempting to get our hopes up, but we've been burned on this before, so we're going to do our best to restrain our expectations. By now you've undoubtedly heard that Apple has set a press event for May 1st, and that most people in the business of predicting this sort of thing are expecting Steve to unveil a new iBook. Believe it, people, because the channel is drier than a Saltine-and-sawdust sandwich right now, and even the Apple Store lists both iBook configurations as "Temporarily Unavailable." If we were betting types, we'd be very comfortable calling this a sure thing.

The part that we're not so sure of is just what the new iBook will turn out to be. According to the little birds chirping around AtAT headquarters (and, incidentally, nesting in our air conditioner), we should expect a single configuration and color, a 500 MHz G3 processor, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive build-to-order option, and-- most disappointingly-- a 12.1-inch screen. But what do birds know? We can't imagine Apple shipping just one configuration of any new Mac, and the company hasn't had a consumer model sans color choice since 1998.

So our skepticism in the birdsong emanating from our air conditioner has us in a receptive mood, which is dangerous considering the red-hot dirt being dished over at Go2Mac. If those folks are correct, then the new iBook (code-named "Marble") may indeed have a 12.1-inch screen-- but only because the whole unit is barely larger than that in the first place. Yes, people, whereas the current iBook is one whopper of a laptop, rumor has it that the "iBook 2" is a mere slip of a thing: "thin and light and almost nothing like the bulbous rounded enclosure of the original iBook." In other words, Apple may finally be leaping back into the subnotebook market it abandoned with the demise of the PowerBook 2400. Pardon us while we drool on ourselves.

But like we said, we're trying to keep our expectations under control, because we've heard all this before-- when the original iBook was still kicking around in Apple's labs. Back then, most people expected "P1" (as it was then called) to be a four-pound subnotebook, so when Uncle Steve proudly hefted his new 6.7-pound baby onstage at the July Macworld Expo in '99, we were just a smidge disappointed that Apple's "kid-friendly" laptop was even bigger than the then-current PowerBook (and, uh, most kids). Oh, and remember how P1 was allegedly going to cost under a thousand bucks, and then debuted at $1599 instead? If so, then you'll probably find Go2Mac's reported price for the entry-level Marble a little familiar, too: $999. So you can understand our reticence, because this has all the earmarks of a Rumor Crying Wolf.

But just because we're skeptical doesn't mean we can't hope...

Okay, so everyone's in a tizzy because Bill Gates isn't the world's richest man anymore, having been bested in the filthy lucre department by Rob Walton of Wal-Borg fame. Personally, we're not dancing any jigs over the news, since in many ways Wal-Mart is to retail what Microsoft is to software-- hugely profitable, wildly successful, and arguably irretrievably evil, depending on your point of view. And since Apple board member and Steve Jobs's bestest buddy Larry Ellison is still one notch lower on the Obscene Personal Wealth meter than ol' Billy Boy, we're just not all that interested.

What does turn our collective crank, however, is Worth Magazine's list of the top fifty CEOs for 2001, as kindly pointed out by faithful viewer J. Alfred Prufrock. (Love those rolled trousers, Alfie boy.) Being generally positive sorts, we'll overlook the fact that (as MacCentral notes) the Stevester slipped from 6th to 12th this year, as well as the travesty of sticking Microsoft CEO Steve "Peter Boyle's Less Socially Adept Half-Brother" Ballmer in the top spot. Instead, we'll focus on the good news: once again, Steve beat out Mike Dell. And really, given the ongoing catfight between these two, what else matters?

Last year, Steve was 6th and Mike was 10th, but even though Steve just fell to 12th in 2001, Mike slipped even further, all the way down to 21st. Perhaps that's due in part to Apple's three-year stock performance of a 78% gain beating Dell's 48%-- but that can't be the only factor, since last year Dell was winning that particular contest 1030% to 662% (ah, that tech stock bubble... how we miss it so...) and still lost out to Steve overall. We'd put the difference down to personal style (i.e. Steve actually has some), but then we take another look at Ballmer, and, well, never mind.

No matter; whatever the reason, Mike's still eating Steve's dust and that's the important thing. We imagine poor Mike is currently flagellating himself and cursing the fact that his last-ditch Apple-bashing in Business Week apparently did nothing to sway the judges. And he must really be steaming over the fact that Steve is described in the article accompanying the list as having "vision," and thus belonging to "the rarest of all CEO breeds," while Mike himself isn't even mentioned. Ouch! But fear not, Mike; 2002's just around the corner, and you've got a whole year in which to distinguish yourself as something other than just another box-builder. Hey, anything's possible.