So Seybold just keeps on rolling along this week, but as far as Apple-related trade shows are concerned, it's one of the only ones to escape the effects of the recent terrorist attacks. Just over a week ago, Apple announced that, due to concerns for the safety of its staff and its customers, it was canceling the Apple Expo, which was slated to begin today in Paris. (Despite the meatspace cancellation, the show's organizers have made a valiant attempt to launch an "online expo" in its stead.) Steve's insistence that there would be "no new hardware products" in Paris couldn't have been more prescient.

And the conference upheaval doesn't end there; Apple has just issued a press release to state that QuickTime Live! 2001, originally scheduled to open on October 8th, just isn't going to happen-- at least, not yet. While the Apple Expo was canceled outright, QTLive! is simply being postponed. Presumably this is because the possibility of impending U.S. military action makes the prospect of safe travel to France sketchy for an unknown length of time, whereas the greatest threat to human safety in Beverly Hills (the site of QTLive!) is when that jerk Steve Sanders spikes Brandon's punch, he winds up drinking like a fish, drives drunk, crashes his car, and gets arrested before Dylan drags him to an AA meeting. At least, so we gather from our extensive research of the area.

Why the rescheduling? As you probably guessed, and as confirmed by Phil Schiller, "many QuickTime developers and customers asked [Apple] to reschedule QuickTime Live to a less stressful time." Apple, always happy to help, obligingly moved the event to next February 10-14. There are just two potential snags with that new date, however. The first is that "QuickTime Live! 2001" is now going to take place in 2002, which may cause the heads of some of the more numerically uptight people out there to catch fire from the inside. Moreover, simply renaming the event with the proper year means that there will be two "QuickTime Live! 2002" conferences next year, which is hardly better. Frankly, we don't see any solution to a problem of this magnitude. Clearly we're all doomed.

However, assuming that Apple is somehow immune to the debilitating effects that such a heinous date inconsistency can inflict on a logical mind, there's another iffy thing about Apple's replacement dates. In rescheduling QTLive! to a "less stressful time," the company has, perhaps unwittingly, stuck the show right on top of Valentine's Day-- which, as many people will attest, is not exactly a stress-free time to be away from the loved ones at a tech conference. (We're anticipating a lot of upset significant others.) Granted, the stress level of being AWOL during a smoochy Hallmark holiday pales in comparison to that of the aftermath of planes crashing into buildings, but what doesn't? All we're saying is that if Apple really wanted to keep its customers relaxed, it would have rescheduled the show for, say, mid-January. In the Bahamas.

Speaking of postponements, trade shows aren't the only events getting pushed forward these days. As you all know, the Saddle Creek Apple store was originally slated to open its doors this coming Saturday in Germantown, Tennessee, no doubt accompanied by the standard hoopla of fanatical Mac users lining up three weeks before the opening and frightening passersby with a level of enthusiasm not commonly observed outside of top secret government mind control experiments. But a couple of days ago, we noted that the grand opening had been indefinitely postponed, thus leaving us in the Mac community adrift without a gala event upon which to set our sights. (It's been an awful ordeal, as we're sure you're painfully aware.)

Anyway, when we heard about the delay, our rational (read: boring) interpretation of the situation was that Apple had most likely decided to hold off on any more store openings until the nation was in a more partylike mood. We figured that the turnout at the International Plaza grand opening a couple of weeks ago-- mere days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks-- was perhaps both somber and less than inspiring, and that Apple wanted to avoid a disappointing repeat performance. However, seeing as it's our job to deliver an utterly irrational interpretation of these sorts of events, we proposed the wacky idea that Apple was delaying the Saddle Creek opening because-- ready for this?-- it was still tussling with the fascistic Germantown Design Review Commission about the store's light-up Apple logo signs. Zany, right? That's comedy gold, baby!

And here we thought we were being so flip and clever. Instead, we got a mammoth-sized dose of truth being far stupider than any kind of fiction we could ever spit out. As faithful viewer Oren Krinsky pointed out, MacMinute reports that continuing squabbling over the alleged unsuitability of Apple's store signage is exactly why the opening has been delayed; while Apple has reportedly managed to persuade the commission to overlook that baffling "no food items on store signs" law (so it can actually get to use its corporate logo) and has even somehow gotten them to overlook some of the size restrictions, Apple and Germantown are now apparently duking it out over the ban on internally-illuminated signs. Fully lit-up logos are a definite no-no, so Apple proposed a compromise wherein only the edges of the logos are lit, but the commission shot it down.

So the decision to delay the Saddle Creek gig had nothing to do with a lousy Tampa opening. Nope, it's all about signage. Yea verily, we haven't heard of a battle so silly since Fred and Barney were getting all bent out of shape over that swimming pool they were trying to share. So Apple's back at the drawing board, presumably trying to figure out whether it'll be more cost-effective to produce some sort of elaborate system of mirrors and lasers to illuminate the logos from the outside, or just pay to have the entire Design Review Commission whacked and replaced with obedient android shills. Meanwhile, the store remains closed until further notice, which is, we're sure you'll agree, a crime against humanity. Here's hoping for a resolution before we all die of old age.

"Hey AtAT," you ask, "where the heck is that new PowerBook G4 you promised us at Seybold?" Whoa, calm down, Beavis. You may have missed it, but we told you last week that Apple wasn't going to have it ready in time. Rumors as to the nature of the delay are various and sundry, ranging from a desire to wait until slot-loading combo drives are abundantly available (the new PowerBook was originally going to be DVD-ROM or CD-RW only, we're told, which apparently didn't go over well with the buying public) to claims that Motorola's too slow when it comes to ponying up the processors. Personally, we don't consider any one of these rumors more trustworthy than the others-- but we do have a gut feeling that the whispers of a new PowerBook intro at a "press event" in mid-October are legit. Call it a hunch.

Not big on hunches? Well, here's a clue that something's probably going to surface pretty soon: faithful viewer JoEL notes that the Apple Store's "Special Deals" section is suddenly utterly devoid of any and all refurbs; visit the page and all you get is a picture of a PowerBook G4 and the message "Refurbished Apple Products are currently out of Stock. Please check back again soon." Now, we may be imagining things, here, but we could have sworn that there were plenty of refurb options available mere days ago. The last time this sort of thing happened was in late June, just a couple of weeks before the Macworld Expo-- which is when the new Power Macs made their debut. Make of that what you will.

Our carefully considered opinion is that Apple will indeed take the wraps off some new gear at a press event in the near future. In fact, not that we seriously think we'll get to see it anytime before our great-grandkids wheel us in to look at one, but heck, we haven't heard about it in a while, so... does anyone remember the LCD iMac? Nah, forget it-- we're just causing trouble. We're betting on the PowerBook-- though, of course, if Steve does want to toss a new iMac into the bargain, we promise we won't complain.