Health alert! AtAT's secret research lab staffed by hyperintelligent chimps (well, okay, AtAT's formerly secret research lab staffed by hyperintelligent chimps) has isolated a rare psychic virus that's "in the wild" and poised for a real outbreak. As far as we can make out, once infected with this new class of virus, subjects become incapable of properly attributing Apple's products and intellectual property to Apple itself-- at least, that's what we gather from the chimps' report; hyperintelligent they may be, but they desperately need penmanship lessons.

Reportedly this bizarre virus (currently dubbed "Virus X") infects entire informational sources in a gestalt fashion, rather than individual people in the group, at least if the symptoms present in Patient Zero are at all indicative. And who is Patient Zero, you ask? Brace yourselves: it's none other than the New York Times. You may recall that just couple of days ago, the Times erroneously attributed the advertising slogan "Think different" to Microsoft instead of Apple in a story about a basketball game. Well, thanks to the eagle eyes of faithful viewer Scott McNulty, the chimps now have a new data point to ponder: earlier today, David Pogue's Times article on small-footprint, big-feature laptops featured a photo of what is unmistakably an iBook-- but its caption identified the system as a "Fujitsu LifeBook S-4546." (The caption has since been corrected, but the chimps documented the error with a screenshot for research purposes.)

Now, just to make absolutely sure that Fujitsu doesn't happen to make an all-white laptop with seven uncovered ports along its left side, a nifty reclining display hinge, and the word "iBook" printed just below the screen, we found Fujitsu's LifeBook S Series page. The photo there is taken from roughly the same angle as the iBook picture, so a quick glance is enough to determine that anyone who mistakes a LifeBook for an iBook is very likely suffering from some sort of illness-- or at least a severe lack of attention to detail. Based on this data, the chimps are convinced that the Times is host to Virus X, and that it's only a matter of time before other media outlets are infected.

Unfortunately, at this time we are unaware of how Virus X spreads, though its unique nature implies that its transport medium is nothing as mundane as air or bodily fluids. Since it's some entirely new breed of psychic bug that infects a gestalt consciousness, for all we know it can replicate itself into a new host organization when a single member of said organization reads an article containing virus-incurred Apple-themed misinformation-- though of course that seems extremely unlikely. Still, we encourage all members of media outlets to exercise caution when exposing themselves to New York Times content, and in fact we here at AtAT are already filtering out all Times web pages so infected content can't reach us via our Gateway iMac or Toshiba PowerBook.

And the "new portable" debate rages on. Ever since somebody at Alpha Top (one of Apple's Taiwanese manufacturing partners) blabbed about what he claimed to be a new new iBook due in July and boasting a "wider screen" and "a variety of colors," speculation has been running rampant. For its part, Apple flat-out denied the reports of a July iBook Surprise, publicly and officially stating that the reports were "incorrect" and "not true"; that just led Apple-watchers to ponder what Alpha Top's wider-LCD, comes-in-colors, non-iBook product really is. Most people figure it's a slightly updated PowerBook G4. Some think it's the new LCD-based iMac, instead. And then Go2Mac made the bold claim that it's actually a third Mac portable which it's calling "Son of Pismo." Dizzy yet?

Well, as faithful viewer Jay R. of Macaholics Anonymous points out, Go2Mac hasn't dropped the "Son of Pismo" assertion yet, and continues to posit that Apple is preparing to offer a third laptop that is essentially last year's Pismo PowerBook decked out in updated threads more befitting a 2001 Apple product-- presumably a slimmer and more angular silvery-whitish-clear enclosure. The idea is that on the low end you've got the iBook, with its 12.1-inch screen, 66 MHz bus, no PC card slot, and mirroring-only video port starting at $1299. Then the Son of Pismo unit would bump the screen up to 14.1 inches, add dual-display capability to the monitor port, jump to a 100 MHz bus, and gain a PC card slot and an infrared port; estimated starting price for this midrange model: $1999. Finally, at the high end there's the titanium PowerBook, with its G4 processor and super-wide 15.2-inch screen, all for $2599 and up.

We'll learn the truth when Steve takes the stage in July, of course, but the more we think about this whole "Son of Pismo" thing, the worse an idea it seems to be. We get a lot of mail here at the AtAT studios from people wishing that Apple would release everything from PDAs to tablets to monitorless iMacs to breakfast cereals (we hear the licensing negotiations over Apple Jacks are imminent)-- and what we've never heard since May 1st is a clamor for a laptop positioned between the iBook and the PowerBook. Back when the iBook was a seven-pound space clam we heard from plenty of people demanding an Apple subnotebook, but now that the new iBook fills that need quite nicely, we haven't heard a peep from anyone who really wishes they could buy last year's PowerBook in a new enclosure. Maybe the demand's out there and we just don't see it-- and, of course, even if the demand isn't out there, that hasn't stopped Apple in the past. (Cube, anyone?)

All we can say is this: if Apple is planning on splitting its notebook market up three ways, it had better have learned some darn good lessons from the Cube sales fiasco. A "middleBook" would somehow have to attract customers who otherwise wouldn't consider buying a Mac portable at all-- or at the very least, it would have to get customers who would have gotten an iBook to pony up an extra few hundred simoleans to trade up to the next level. It can't cannibalize any PowerBook G4 sales, which is a tough criterion to meet; Go2Mac's proposed product line-up would likely inspire a slew of potential PowerBook customers to save $600 by sacrificing the 15.2-inch screen and Altivec power, neither of which are exactly crucial features for most pros. Frankly, we don't see how Apple could pull it off. Then again, it's not our job to come up with a workable plan, and Apple's performed miracles before. We just hope that when we're sitting in the audience at the next Stevenote, we don't see something that makes us cringe as visions of earnings warnings dance in our heads.

This isn't exactly on-topic, but some of you may be interested to hear that the owner of a strip club in Atlanta is swearing under oath that Bill Gates frequents his establishment. Well, okay, that may be overstating it a little, but according to The Register, Steve Kaplan is currently "under scrutiny by the U.S. Government" because his business, The Gold Club, may be linked to "pimps, the Mafia, and fraud," so in a desperate bid to show that his joint is respectable, he's unveiled a clientele list of so-called "wholesome" characters that come by to unwind. Among those celebs is none other than Billy G. himself.

Now, whether you choose to believe Kaplan's claim or not is entirely up to you. For what it's worth, Microsoft was "unable to comment on what Gates did in his spare time," which certainly isn't a denial, but at the same time, one would think that Bill is plenty rich enough to order a slew of his own strippers instead of having to fly all the way out to Atlanta every time he wants to watch some jiggling naked flesh. If you do suspect that Bill likes to hang out in an "upmarket hostess joint for professionals who want to relax" (he can certainly afford the $10 cover charge and $5 beers, at any rate), then you have to wonder about these alleged links to organized crime; apparently the government claims "the club is in league with the Mafia, supplies prostitutes to club visitors, cons customers out of thousands of dollars, and has deals with corrupt police officers." Hmmm... conning customers out of thousands of dollars is what Tiggers do best; at least, billionaire Tiggers who hail from Redmond. Sounds like Bill may be more than just a "customer" in that establishment. Has anyone really traced the ownership back past Steve Kaplan?

We'll leave it as an exercise for the viewer to spin a conspiracy theory around this strip club revelation that includes the Mafia and corrupt law enforcement and Microsoft's apparent immunity to federal antitrust laws. As for us, the big mystery preying on our minds is why anybody in his right mind would actually list Bill Gates as an example of a "wholesome" customer. Um, does anyone remember that whole "Redmond Justice" thing? Or is this a case of "innocent until proven guilty on appeal"? Justice may be blind, but the public has the attention span of a two-year-old on speed...