Happy July! And what a July it's already turning out to be; after a June that was plagued with some wicked lulls in the Apple drama department, this month is shaping up to be a real thrill ride by comparison. Not only do we have Macworld Expo looming just two weeks away, but we've also got some serious heat churning up the rumor mill in anticipation of that blessed event. While many of you may already have chosen sides in the whole "new Power Macs at Expo" issue, we at AtAT are still sitting on the fence, what with the mixed signals we're getting-- so we heartily welcome all the new dirt with which July has seen fit to unload, because while it's not necessarily helping to clarify things, at least it's keeping us wildly entertained in our confusion.

Regular viewers are already aware that we ourselves managed to scare up our own optimistic hieroscopic prophesy of Expo-borne Power Macs running at speeds starting at today's high water mark of 733 MHz and reaching at high as 1 GHz. And while the soy-based goat entrail substitute we used is a terrific source with wonderful accuracy, we've been having trouble reconciling that prediction with the slew of Power Macs still left in the channel; Apple is traditionally both exceedingly thorough and painfully obvious in its attempts to clear the decks when new gear is imminent. This time around, though, not so much-- hence, our fence-sitting.

But what's this? The Naked Mole Rat rides again, spreading tales of new Power Macs code-named "Titan" just two weeks away from their fresh-faced debut; there's no mention of gigahertz in his trademark ramblings, though at least "866 MHz" is mentioned. (We've heard tell of a range breakdown like this: 733 MHz, 866 MHz, 933 MHz, and 1 GHz. So maybe the Rat's just suffering from a touch of tunnel vision.) Possibly more interesting is the claim that Titan sports a "redesigned front panel"-- not a whole new enclosure, you'll note, which we personally don't expect until the rise of the Power Mac G5 next year-- including "curvaceous new drive bays and a bodacious new speaker."

And for still more dirt weighing heavily on the "yes" side of the argument, faithful viewer Adam Younker notes that Mac Rumors has posted a note from an alleged CompUSA employee who just noticed that a whole slew of current Macs has received new source codes in the retail giant's inventory system. If true, this means that "at least one of the iMacs of each speed, all of the Power Mac G4s, and all of the Cubes" are now designated "-N01," reportedly the code for items no longer carried. There's plenty of good Expo juice to be squeezed from that: new iMacs, as everyone guessed; the death of the Cube (or a new model, but we're not holding our breath); and still more evidence that new Power Macs are just around the corner. (By the way, note the absence of the PowerBook from that list of discontinued Macs. We're still figuring on a September update for Apple's pro portable line.)

There certainly is a ton of evidence that new Power Macs are just weeks away; all we can figure is that Apple has come up with some intriguing plan to deal with the systems still clogging the channel. Given the fact that plenty of the existing 733 MHz Power Macs have thousand-dollar SuperDrives in them, we just can't see Apple repricing them and turning them into entry-level models. Maybe Steve's got some new scheme up his sleeve whereby resellers can send unsold merchandise back in exchange for the new models, and Apple would then unload the older gear via the newly-empty Special Deals section at the Apple Store. Or maybe Apple will just stick resellers with the unsold stuff, inciting mass riots and total mayhem. In any event, it looks like we've got one wild and wacky month ahead of us...

Uh-oh, is that a dark cloud on the horizon? Macworld Expo is generally a happy, carefree time full of music and love and dancing in the mud and not taking the brown acid and... wait, that might be something else. But in any case, Expo is generally the feel-good hit of the summer for Mac users who can make it out to the show, and this time around it promises to be an even bigger love-in than usual: this time, as you're all well aware, marks Mac OS X's "coming out party." Sure, the lickable OS may have shipped over three months ago, but the real shift will happen when every Mac ships with Mac OS X installed as the default operating system. When Steve said that would happen "this summer," everybody assumed he meant at the Expo.

That dark cloud threatening to rain on our Happy Time, though, is that the version of Mac OS X that ships at this long-awaited celebration may not be the version we've all been waiting for. It's no secret that Mac OS X 10.0 was meant for "early adopters"-- also known as "people who can overlook slothlike performance, a zillion missing features, and a stunning lack of available applications just as long as the buttons are blue and throbbing." (in other words, people like us.) All versions of Mac OS X released publicly to date are collectively referred to as the "Cheetah" release; "Puma," or Mac OS X 10.1, is supposed to offer dramatic speed improvements and several missing features-- it's the version that the average shmoe can use and enjoy. In other words, Puma is Mac OS X for the rest of us. What could be more logical than new iMacs running Puma being released at Macworld Expo, Mac OS X's coming out party?

Sadly, logic doesn't dictate software development schedules-- or their slippage. As faithful viewer Kerry B. points out, Think Secret reports that several sources now claim that Puma won't be ready in time for the big shindig two weeks from now. Instead, Steve may "demo 10.1 onstage at Macworld, but the public release will come after that," possibly as late as September; as a result, any new Macs that Steve unveils at the show "will ship with 10.0.4." That scenario makes us slightly nervous; we've been using 10.0.4 since it became available, and while it's better than 10.0 was, it's still not the version of Mac OS X we'd like the world at large to judge. The last thing Apple needs on top of the megahertz myth is for reviewers to tell the world that the new Mac OS X iMacs "feel slow."

For what it's worth, in his latest report, the Naked Mole Rat generally concurs with Think Secret's take on the sitch, at least on the lateness tip-- he reports that Puma is "now due to ship a few weeks after the Expo"; however, he also claims that the new Power Macs that Steve will likely trot out onstage probably won't ship until Puma is preloaded. Whether this "hold the hardware for Puma" tactic would apply to new iMacs as well remains to be seen. Personally, if it were up to us, we'd probably opt to wait until Puma was done before chucking Mac OS X at the world at large. But while it's true that Apple only stated that Mac OS X would be ready for prime time "this summer," and even early September still officially qualifies, it'll be a shame if Apple misses its chance to ship Puma at the Expo loaded on its new hardware. Hey, this is all just rumor, and maybe Puma will be ready for the show after all-- but if you're headed to the Expo, you may want to pack an umbrella just in case, because that cloud's looking a little angry to us.

Anyone who's tried to tune in to our little show here during peak hours and waited half a minute before getting a signal has experienced firsthand one of the biggest drawbacks of DSL: your available bandwidth is limited primarily by your effective physical distance from the phone company's nearest central office. What's that mean? Well, it means that AtAT originally couldn't get a pipe wider than 768K without picking up our compound and moving it several thousand feet to the left. And it also means that ever since April, when the phone company decided to screw around with some equipment or wiring or something, our effective distance shot up another 4,000 feet-- thus knocking our maximum bandwidth down by 67%.

Of course, it also means that there are plenty of people who live more than 18,000 feet away from their nearest central office and therefore can't get DSL at all. (Given our headaches with the technology, we're starting to consider them the lucky ones, but that's beside the point.) One such soul is longtime tech pundit Robert X. Cringely, who finally got fed up with not having access to any viable broadband Internet service and finally took matters into his own hands-- with a telescope, a phone, a pair of AirPort Base Stations, a couple of directional antennas, some household bleach, three sticks of chewing gum, the ink cartridge from a ballpoint pen, and the channeled spirit of MacGyver.

Many thanks to faithful viewer Jens Baumeister, who pointed out Cringely's latest column, in which he details his inspiring workaround of DSL's distance limitations. Basically, it works like this: Cringely lives on a hill, and used his telescope to scout out residences in the valley which would be close enough to the central office to qualify for DSL service. Then he started calling these people on the phone and explaining what he wanted to do-- basically, pay to give the person free DSL service if said person would then let Cringely piggyback off the connection. Eventually he found a taker, and then built a ten-kilometer line-of-sight AirPort link between the two houses using seriously souped-up Base Stations to create his "802.11b wireless link from Hell." And there you have it: how to circumvent DSL's distance requirements for only a couple thousand bucks. Enjoy!

Sadly, since AtAT's compound isn't located on a mountaintop, Cringely's approach wouldn't work for us, but a permanent fix for AtAT's bandwidth issues is in the works. With luck everything will be spleftier than ever by the time the Expo rolls around. Keep your fingers crossed, and hang in there.