Ah, Valentine's Day-- that glorious celebration of love inspired by the historic occasion of St. Hallmark driving all shame out of the greeting card business in the early 1400s. Well, AtAT may not by a virtual luv-fest like some sites we could mention (heartfelt congratulations to CmdrTaco and Kathleen Fent on their Very SlashDot Proposal and subsequent engagement; we're certain their geek love will flourish gloriously), but in the spirit of the day, we thought we'd dish out something extra-special for those of you feeling a little lonely without the PDA of your dreams by your side. So willingly suspend that disbelief and brace yourselves for three big rumorological smooches of Apple handheldy goodness. Thy cup runneth over!

Smooch number one: we've been hanging onto this one for a whole week, just waiting for the right occasion. By now you've probably seen it, but just in case you haven't, faithful viewer ~brian tipped us off to a batch of Apple-branded PDA evidence that we can only describe as tenuous, at best; according to Insanely Great Mac, a French Mac site (MacGeneration) recently linked to a translation of a Taiwanese article allegedly all about how Inventec Appliances has "possibly" been contracted by Apple to crank out "iPads." Yessiree, folks, according to this unattributed Taiwanese article translated into English and uncovered via France, the iPad is no less than the iPod 2, doubling its storage capacity to 10 GB and merging in Palm OS-based PDA functions alongside its existing MP3-playing capabilities. The credulous will be glad to hear that it's slated to appear "at the end of the first quarter or at the beginning of the second quarter."

Smooch number two: faithful viewer Xapplimatic gives the iPad believers still more to cling to, by pointing out an article at Brighthand which mentions that at last week's PalmSource Conference and Expo, the author "heard whispers that Apple has licensed the Palm platform and had developed a cool FireWire device to round out its new consumer device strategy." What's nifty is that this rumor meshes perfectly with the iPad rumor above; a consumer-targeted, FireWire-equipped PDA could very well be a next-generation iPod as described previously. Of course, there's no guarantee whatsoever that the source of those rumors at PalmSource wasn't the very same mysterious Taiwanese newspaper article mentioned above, but heck, it's Valentine's Day-- such suspicions are better left to less impulsive occasions.

Smooch number three: faithful viewer soupruls tells us that a Newton mailing list is all abuzz with talk of an imminent "Newton 3." Apparently some individuals have convinced themselves that while Apple nuked the Newton platform in the third week of February in 1998, the company plans to "reinvent it" in the third week of February this year. (That's next week, for those too overcome with love to check a calendar.) We're not entirely clear whether some sort of causality is supposed to be involved with the dates, but heck-- it's a day of limitless possibilities. Give yourself over to your PDA desires, because tomorrow it's back to the rational world. Maybe.

We're certain that some of you are still coming to terms with the fact that Apple is replacing the traditional Macintosh operating system with a colorful candy shell on top of some big, ugly command-liney stuff, but sooner or later you're probably just going to have to accept it: the future of the Mac is Mac OS X, and under the hood, Mac OS X is UNIX. The good news is that Apple is doing a pretty spectacular job of shielding "normal" users from those arcane strings of commands that lurk beneath the surface; the better news is that those arcane strings of commands and a full BSD UNIX layer are attracting a whole different class of geek to the Mac party.

Now, before you say something awful about not wanting UNIX geeks in your neck of the platform, we'd like to remind you that the AtAT staff has been using UNIX for longer than we've been using Macs. (Here's the part where you stutter and say something about how some of your best friends are UNIX geeks, but you wouldn't necessarily want your sister to marry one.) For our money, nothing but good can come from inviting some of the nerdier element over to "our side," because cross-pollination is a wonderful strategy for diversification and strength. Mac geek, UNIX geek-- can't we all just get along? (Of course, we draw the line at frolicking with Windows geeks; you've got to have some standards.)

Anyway, we're pleased to see that Apple isn't shamefacedly trying to hide the fact that much of Mac OS X's buzzword-compliance comes from its UNIX underpinnings; indeed, the company is actively courting the UNIX community to come on over and kick the tires. C'mon, what nerd could resist the utter cool factor of debugging shell scripts in a terminal window on a widescreen-sportin', gigaflop=pumpin' PowerBook G4? Suddenly Apple's product line holds some palpable appeal for a whole slew of computer-using kin that would previously rather trim their toenails with a chainsaw than be caught using a Mac, and Apple's taking advantage of that fact; according to The Register, two panelists at the annual USENIX BSD Conference beamed in from the mothership in Cupertino.

That's right, both Jordan Hubbard (who recently jumped to Apple from FreeBSD) and Ernest Prabhakar addressed the UNIXy throngs and put forth the interesting-- and potentially alarming-- notion that since Mac OS X now ships on every Mac, and BSD UNIX is in Mac OS X, BSD is now "three times more popular on the desktop than Linux." These guys are enticing UNIX die-hards not by emphasizing the Mac's point-and-click ease of use, but by mentioning that Apple "has one of the biggest gcc compiler design teams in the world" that is "working to get optimization developed at Apple integrated into the main code tree." Geekspeak, anyone? Says Hubbard, "the Macintosh has always been very fascist, but we're now starting to embrace the diversity of BSD. We'd love you to bring your X11 application to Mac OS X."

The more the merrier, folks; dive right in, the Aqua's fine! And for those of you who are still a little nervous about what a sudden influx of command-line-using hardcore nerds might do to the makeup of our platform, relax; the worst that could happen is that you'll wind up with more applications from which to choose. Well, that and your sister might elope...

We're sure that plenty of Mac fans must have been pretty elated last month when Steve took the wraps off the new iBook with the 14-inch screen; sure, you get the same number of pixels, but those pixels are bigger, which, for some people, makes all the difference. After all, it's all about choice. Want maximum mobility, minimum weight, and a petite but high-res screen? Get one of the 12-inch puppies. Eyes maybe not what they once were, and an extra pound or so doesn't give you pause? Then the 14-incher is for you. Stock options may not hold the allure they once did, but product options are still pretty darn cool.

But what's this? Mac OS Rumors reports that come this summer, all iBooks will come with 14-inch screens. That's fine for the "bigger is better" crowd, but what about all of the road warriors who snapped up the iBook in record numbers specifically because of its ultraportable form factor? We heard complaints from viewers for years bemoaning the lack of a sub-five-pound laptop in Apple's product line; we even heard of people going to extreme measures to trick out PowerBook 2400s (Apple's last subnotebook, discontinued way back in the spring of 1998) to extend their capabilities and useable lives well beyond what modern science had thought possible. We're dead certain that the pent-up demand for a mini-PowerBook contributed hugely to the iBook's record-breaking sales numbers.

So Apple, if you're listening, consider this a plea on behalf of all globe-trotting Mac users who know what a difference an extra pound on the shoulder can make while hurtling through the airport on the way to the gate. Likewise, an extra inch and a half of width can take up a surprising amount of room in a shoulder bag, and that additional inch of depth probably doesn't help when trying to get work done in coach when the passenger in front of you decides to recline his seat back. Right now the whole alleged move to all-14-inch displays is "just a rumor," but if it actually comes to pass, we envision lots of 2400-style preservation tactics being applied to obsoleted 12-inchers another four or five years down the line.