Heck, what's one false start between friends? Regular viewers are aware that Apple issued a press release yesterday touting the new nVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium graphics card as a build-to-order option for the Power Mac G4; this latest 3D powerhouse reportedly cranks out just under five billion texels per second, thus providing just one more reason for 3D games fanatics of the Mac persuasion to investigate possible methods for funding the purchase of an all-new rig. (Indentured servitude is starting to look pretty good, as is a life of crime.) There was just one teensy little problem with Apple's press release: nVIDIA itself hadn't even announced the product yet. Oopsie. Apple retracted the press release, claiming that it contained "erroneous information."

As it turns out, of course, the only thing "erroneous" about that press release was the day it was issued, because now that nVIDIA has officially launched the GeForce4 line, Apple has re-posted what appears to be the exact same press release with a new date at the top. That's good news for games fans, who may have been concerned that perhaps Apple had left a zero or two out of its original pricing info, but it's not so; the GeForce4 Ti will indeed be a $250-350 option for new Power Macs, and will be available in an upgrade kit for $399 "this spring" for owners of existing 4x AGP systems.

That's not exactly chump change, but neither does it require that potential purchasers ransom a continent or two with a spaceborne orbiting Death Ray. (Yes, we're all about Death Rays these days. So stay on our good side.) We, ourselves, are sorely tempted to start budgeting for a GeForce4 Ti now, purely for the Accuview real-time full-screen antialiasing feature, provided that it's supported on the Mac. Frame rate, shmame rate-- our GeForce3 is plenty fast enough on its own, but nothing ruins the beauty and grace of internal organs arcing majestically through the virtual air like harsh jagged lines. What can we say? We're aesthetes at heart.

Anyway, that's not important right now. What is important is that, despite the company's utterly humorless attitude about nondisclosure agreements and protecting trade secrets, Apple totally screwed up and leaked info about another company's product a day early. Everybody point and laugh! Okay, that's enough.

We know some people have been insisting that Apple's Quality Control department has been napping on the job for the past couple of years, but personally, we've always had very good luck with our Apple out-of-box experience, so we've generally cut the QC folks a little slack. Granted, in recent years it hasn't been terribly unusual for a given Mac product to have a signature "quirk" that affects some of the units rolling off the production lines; that whole fracas with those "Cube cracks" leaps to mind, for example. But even a problem as systemic as that was relatively subtle, and quite possibly not the kind of thing an inspector could reasonably be expected to notice as an affected unit is chugging by on a conveyor belt.

An Apple logo that's been torn asunder and slapped on cockeyed, however, strikes us as the kind of thing that should catch someone's eye. Faithful viewer Usonian74 tipped us off to a photo of a new iMac over at Mac OS Rumors that's just... well, it's just not right. There's supposed to be a shiny silver Apple logo on the back of the screen above the point where the LCD attaches to the stainless steel articulated arm; in the photo, however, there's a lonely silver leaf in roughly the expected position, while the rest of the apple is about two inches too low, an inch to the right, and perched at a jaunty forty-five degree angle. In short, it's messed up.

Anyone with the merest hint of Macness in his or her soul would spot such a sacrilegious perversion of our Holy Icon in an instant. Yes, we know that the logo is on the back of the screen, but shouldn't an inspector be looking at all sides of a product before it goes in the box? (We also suspect that true Macfolk can just sort of feel when the Apple logo has been somehow defaced-- it's kind of like Spider Sense, only far more useless.) Maybe we're being desperately naïve about the whole concept of inspection, but to us, a quick glance at a product from one angle doesn't exactly constitute a winning strategy for quality control. We're not suggesting that Apple subject each iMac to a rigorous all-angles fourteen-point visual inspection followed by a pass under a scanning electron microscope, a professional aura reading, and a thorough scan with a Tricorder from Star Trek. But jeez, at least take a glance at the back of the thing.

What's worse, this particular "mangled logo" issue doesn't appear to be a one-of-a-kind anomaly; MOSR reports that another iMac was spotted at an Apple retail store sporting a back-of-the-screen logo that was "located in the far left bottom corner, somewhat deformed." On the plus side, two instances is hardly an epidemic, and we're betting that errors like these are rare enough that afflicted systems might even be worth something someday. You know, kind of like when they accidentally print stamps upside-down? So take a look at the back of your iMacs, people; you may just have a collector's item on your hands.

Maine's laptop saga continues, as Governor King continues to push for his $25 million initiative to outfit all of the state's middle school students with iBooks, while opponents of the plan insist that the money would be better spent on more vital social services in this faltering economy. Meanwhile, Apple remains caught in the middle, with the "biggest education computer purchase ever" hanging in limbo, and Uncle Steve wondering if the residents of Maine will derail his deal and make him regret trumpeting that sales coup before the money ever changed hands. It's one thing to count your chickens before they're hatched, but counting government money before the check clears is just plain reckless.

So here's the latest: while the controversy is raging as hot as ever, the Sun Journal reports that one Maine senator has proposed an interesting compromise. Senator Peggy Rotundo's approach is the essence of simplicity: basically she says, hey, instead of blowing $25 million on iBooks for every Maine junior high school student, why not spend $12.5 million on laptops for just the seventh-graders, instead? The idea is that the money saved "could restore education and social service cuts" while Maine could still "keep the contract the state has signed with Apple." Oh, sure, it would no longer be the biggest education computer purchase ever, but heck, even Uncle Steve would admit that it's better than nothing. Everybody would be (sort of) happy.

Everyone, that is, except for Maine's middle schoolers and Peggy herself. Anyone who has even the faintest recollection of that Deepest Pit in Hell known as "junior high" and the denizens of said infernal region will immediately spot the two little flaws in her plan. The first, obviously, is that if only the seventh-graders get iBooks, then the eighth-graders will just beat them up and steal their gear. The second is that poor Peggy would also be spending the entire following year dealing with toilet paper in her trees, eggs on her car, and flaming doggie doo on her doorstep as swarms of disgruntled eighth-graders across the entire state make pilgrimages to her home town of Lewiston to exact their revenge on "that lady that denied us access to the Promised Land of wireless Internet porn."

If Senator Rotundo is willing to endure that sort of torment for the good of the state (while also sacrificing the lives of some 18,000 seventh-graders-- but what the heck, they can't vote anyway), then more power to her; we like politicians that can make bold and selfless decisions. Personally, though, we'd call this a "back to the drawing board" sort of situation...