What can we say? There isn't a slow news day that goes by that we don't drop to our knees and give thanks to Steve above for the divine gift of rampant speculation. (Granted, His Steveness isn't exactly fond of Mac rumors, but hey, that's just the sort of paradoxical dualism you're going to have to deal with in a Steve-created universe. Steve works in mysterious ways.) Today we're especially thankful that on the third day, Steve gave us Go2Mac-- because those Mac product prophets continue to posit that next month's Macworld Expo will bring forth a mysterious third Mac portable that True Believers are calling "Son of Pismo."

Those eagerly awaiting the coming of the Son preach that it will be last year's FireWire PowerBook (originally code-named Pismo) reborn and clad in shiny new raiments befitting its miraculous resurrected state. To that end, followers of the Son of Pismo insist that it will be sandwiched neatly between the PowerBook G4 and the spunky little iBook in terms of size, price, and features (14.1-inch screen, 500 MHz G3 processor but with a 100 MHz bus, and a full set of Pismo ports-- oh, and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive option), but boasting a shiny new polycarbonate coat over a magnesium frame. In short, if the Go2Mac prophets are correct, it'll be the Peter Brady of Apple's newly-expanded three-sibling 2001 portable line.

Or will it be Jan Brady, instead? Call us faithless heathens, but we still can't shake the memory of Apple's last attempt to split its simple "pro/consumer" dichotomy into a three-product strategy-- in its desktop line. The Cube may be one heckuva slick product, but numbers don't lie-- ask it about its lackluster sales performance, and the Cube would probably start whining about how it's all Marcia's fault: "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" No matter which way we look at it, we can't help but think that a "middleBook" is just going to split the vote by trying to steal existing sales from the more expensive (and more profitable) PowerBook. (What's this puppy's code name, do you think? Perot? Nader?)

We love our Pismo, we truly do, and we'd be proud to see it return to Apple's product line in a slightly revised form. But we're still skeptical that the Son shall rise next month as predicted-- and if it does, our overriding concern is that it will either cannibalize PowerBook G4 sales or suffer from seriously anemic numbers like a certain other Apple "middle child" that's rumored to be disowned any day now. If Go2Mac does turn out to be right about this, then all we can say is that we hope Apple has spent a little more time thinking about a target market this time around. (That's not to say we doubt the divine hand of Almighty Steve, of course-- what, you think we want to burn in Wintel Hell?)

By the way, Go2Mac also predicts the appearance of a combo-drive PowerBook G4 next month, as well as new colored iBooks. Personally, we're guessing that PowerBooks with internal CD-RW support may come just a wee bit later than the Expo, but as for new colored iBooks, well, heck-- they're already here! At least, according to USA TODAY's iBook review, as pointed out by a befuddled Adam Bezark...

Yes, in an article dated just last Friday and titled "iBook still the standard in laptops," USA TODAY reviewer Bruce Schwartz gives Apple's latest consumer portable three and a half stars out of four. Good news, right? But despite the date and the use of the word "still" in the review's title, this isn't a review of the new iBook; the laptop that Bruce describes bears little similarity to the model that's graced Apple's product line since early May. This iBook's base price is listed as $1599, its enclosure is described as a "latchless, hinged clamshell case," and the specs include a 300 MHz G3 processor and "no built-in DVD or recordable-CD options." And just to make it abundantly clear that something is horribly amiss, the photo accompanying the article depicts a first-generation Tangerine iBook instead of the sleek white jobbie we've all been drooling over for the past six or seven weeks.

Now, the way we see it, one of three things may have happened. The first is that Apple just issued yet another new iBook (whose specifications are eerily identical to the revision B model of early 2000) and told no one but USA TODAY. The second is that, as Adam suggests, USA TODAY has found a way to write reviews through a temporal loop. The third, which is so extraordinarily unlikely that we hesitate even to mention it, is that USA TODAY was asleep at the wheel and accidentally re-ran a review of the rev. B iBook thinking that it was in fact a new review of the current model. A quick check of the Apple Store rules out scenario 1, and the fact that we've been watching this article for days and it still hasn't been fixed proves that scenario 3 is out... so all we can say is, congratulations to USA TODAY for inventing the flux capacitor and breaking the time barrier.

Actually, there is a fourth possibility-- which is that USA TODAY in its infinite wisdom recognized that even an iBook from sixteen months ago at its original price still rates three and a half stars in today's laptop market. C'mon, how can we not give the benefit of the doubt to the publication solely responsible for making bar graphs hip in the '80s?

Okay, okay-- so The Register has seen fit to dash our conspiracy theories against the rocks of reason by reporting that the Wall Street Journal has admitted blame: MSNBC didn't edit a WSJ article to make it more Microsoft-friendly, which would have proven that Redmond keeps a chokehold on the editorial practices of its own puppet media outlet. Instead, it was the WSJ itself who screwed up, by initially sending MSNBC an earlier draft of the article, and then never sending in the final version. Of course, when a company is as rich as Microsoft is, reworking a conspiracy theory to include a massive bribe to a well-respected media outlet in order to divert blame is but a simple matter, and only adds to the overall effect-- so in a way, we're happy about this latest turn of events.

However, we're well aware that the more paranoia-challenged among you will probably consider this little fracas over and done with, so we figured we'd give you another Redmond scandal to chew on in its place. If you follow the exploits of Bill's minions at all, you're probably aware that in the past six weeks, Microsoft has launched a full-scale PR assault on the open source movement; indeed, that was the subject of the very article which MSNBC was accused of editing. Well, while we were waiting for Verizon to fix our obviously-cut-by-Bill's-operatives DSL line (and if you don't think Verizon's top dogs are all secretly on Microsoft's payroll, you're delusional), we stumbled across a ZDNet article which reveals a very interesting fact: even as Microsoft insists to the public that using open source software is the quickest path to communism and severe gum disease, it appears that the company has itself been using open source software on the QT.

For one thing, as faithful viewer Kevin McKaig pointed out, Microsoft is evidently using chunks of FreeBSD in various versions of Windows, including Windows 2000. That's not in the least bit illegal-- it is open source, after all-- but the practice seems just a wee bit at odds with the company's current "free software is the work of the devil" rhetoric. Oh, and as faithful viewer Mike Devlin reminded us, FreeBSD is still used in portions of the Microsoft-owned Hotmail free email service, despite Microsoft's claims to the contrary. For ages (and as recently as last Wednesday), the Redmond Giant has stated that Hotmail has been 100% Windows since last summer, but this past Friday, a company spokesperson admitted that FreeBSD is still in use "on numerous 'server' computers that manage major functions" at Hotmail.

Now, do these sound like the actions of a company who really believes that open source software (contrary to most available data) "has inherent security risks and can force intellectual property into the public domain"? Sure, Microsoft claims that it just hasn't gotten around to expunging all vestiges of FreeBSD from its systems, but "one employee of the Redmond, Wash., company said Microsoft has deliberately kept FreeBSD in parts of Hotmail because of its technical superiority over Windows in important functions and furthermore had decided to actually increase its reliance on FreeBSD." Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to claim publicly that open source software like FreeBSD (not to mention Mac OS X's core, Darwin) is tantamount to a flesh-eating virus. Gee, whom to believe?