Some of you may have noticed that it's been a while since we've dabbled with the unseen forces of the nether realms for the sake of predicting future Apple hardware. Well, to be honest, we've sort of gone off the whole idea of tapping the spirit world for insights into Apple's upcoming developments, in part because of nagging fears that consorting with mystic forces will damn our eternal souls to an eternity of fire and poking in the stygian shades below, but mostly because we got really tired of trying to clean blood and ectoplasm out of the carpet. Thank heaven for OxiClean®.

That said, we came across a new deck of Tarot cards recently, so we figured we'd try to take a peek into Apple's hardware development plans, you know, just to break them in. The only problem was that when we flipped over the pivotal "Outcome" card to divine near-term changes in Apple's product lineup, we found that we had dealt The Mouse. Now, we aren't exactly experts on the Tarot, here, but we're reasonably certain that Mickey generally isn't included as one of the Major Arcana. Serves us right for accepting a free gift from Disney's new occult paraphernalia subsidiary. (Hey, c'mon-- you knew that with Eisner at the helm, it was only a matter of time.)

At first we interpreted this to be just yet another resurrection of the age-old "Disney buys Apple" rumor, but after staring at Mickey's smiling visage for a while, Enlightenment came to us in a glow of tingling warmth. (Actually, it may have just been a mild case of acid reflux, but we're banking on the former until we need to reach for the Rolaids.) There we were, staring at Mickey's pair of goofy red shorts and its two big buttons, when suddenly it hit us-- Mouse with two buttons? Two-button mouse? Ah, so it's that other age-old rumor rearing its ugly head.

Granted, lack of experience with the product means that we can't vouch for the accuracy of the Disney Tarot, but we're getting a pretty strong vibe here that major changes are afoot. And since most of the hardcore Mac traditionalists have already perished from shock after seeing what Mac OS X did to Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines, it's not completely insane to think that Apple might finally deem the market ready to accept the first ever Mac two-button mouse. Also, Mac OS X is Apple's default-booting operating system now, and has plenty of integrated support for right-clicking. Could the Pro Mouse be on its way out, maybe within as little as a month or so? Eisner's line of kiddie divination tools certainly seems to think so.

Now, if we had drawn The Mouse crossed with the Wheel of Fortune, we'd feel pretty good about predicting a scrollwheel on that rodent (or that it would bear a striking silkscreened likeness of Vanna White), but unfortunately that's a lot less clear than we'd like. But if Disney sends over a Little Mermaid Ouija Board within the next couple of weeks, we'll let you know what we find out.

Does everybody remember when Apple blindsided us all in January of last year with that new-fangled "SuperDrive" contraption, which, together with its accompanying iDVD software, promised to usher us all into a shining new era of bad home movies for the Digital Age? At the time we were a little nonplussed, primarily since we were hard pressed to imagine that the Do-It-Yourself DVD Revolution was really going to catch fire while the SuperDrive was only available in the top-of-the-line 733 MHz Power Mac G4. It's tough to start a grass-roots technological movement when the price of entry is a hair short of thirty-five hundred bucks.

But here we are fifteen months later, and Apple's still dutifully waving the iDVD flag. The technology got a much-needed shot in the arm this past January when the SuperDrive came to the iMac, thus bringing Apple's highly-touted DVD-burning capability to "the rest of us"; what used to cost $3499 was suddenly available for just $1799. (Well, sort of available, for a while. But they're shipping in droves, now, we hear.) Apple has wrested DVD production from the death-grip of the rich pros and brought it to the semi-rich masses, thus sending shivers down the spines of many a relative dreading the thought of interminable hours of school plays, oboe recitals, vacation footage, and the like-- all shot in crystal-clear digital video and burned to convenient and easy-to-store DVDs that, some might say unfortunately, can't be "accidentally" taped over with Seinfeld reruns as soon as the beaming faux Spielbergs walk back out the front door. Truly, 'tis a whole new era in the realm of boring friends and relatives to tears. And digitally!

And the revolution is apparently truly underway: today Apple issued a press release to boast that it's shipped "nearly half a million SuperDrive-equipped Macintosh computers" since the technology was unleashed two Januarys ago-- and at least some people are apparently actually using them. (The company has also sold "more than 2 million DVD-R media discs," and at $5 a pop, we doubt people are just buying them to use as shiny purple coasters.) Just think about that for a minute; half a million Mac users out there have the technological capability to create their own DVDs-- and, frighteningly enough, you have to number us, your AtAT staff, among them. (Dadadadummmmm!) Oh, but fret not, folks; we promise we aren't planning to bore you all to death with DVDs full of footage from our recent trip to the textile museum... because our textile-trip DVDs are going to be enthralling masterpieces of cinematic beauty. Uh-huh. Right.

Well, you know what they say: you can't throw a desktop video revolution without boring a few people into a coma. But we're flashing back to the desktop printing revolution and a zillion family newsletters mixing eighty fonts on one page, so we're starting to wonder if perhaps SuperDrives should only be sold to customers who pass an exam in basic aesthetics first...

You know, we haven't actually used AOL in a good long while, but we do have several years' worth of experience with that particular online service, and we've got to say... we're kind of tired of beating up on it. Okay, so the company has 7.0 software for Windows but only 5.0 software for Macs. So it's created enough sign-up floppies and CD-ROMs over the years to overflow a landfill the size of Montana. So it resorted to hiding said floppies and CD-ROMs in everything from our breakfast cereals to our own abdominal cavities in hopes of signing up more rubes. So, for whatever reason, AOL yielded massively slower connections than any standard PPP-based dial-up service over the same modem, possibly because (as our saucy neighbor Jed likes to say) it has to "drag along all that extra suck." The point is, AOL has been the whipping boy of the Mac online services for ages now, and maybe deservedly so, but don't you feel that maybe it's time to pass the title along to a new contender?

Well, ask and ye shall receive! If you're as tired of bagging on AOL as we are, get ready, because before too long there may be a new punching bag in the ISP borough of Macville; faithful viewer Sledgehammer Smythe tipped us off to a Think Secret report which states that Microsoft may well be bringing MSN Internet Access to the Mac sometime this summer, complete with MSN Explorer. What's MSN Explorer, you ask? Microsoft describes it as "all-in-one software that delivers everything you need to feel at home on the Web. E-mail, instant messaging, Web browsing, and more are integrated in a friendly program." In other words, it's basically Microsoft's answer to AOL. So soon, instead of using AOL's bloated and slow Internet software, you'll be able to use Microsoft's half-assed attempt to copy it, instead. Woo-hoo!!

Note that we're making some wild assumptions, here, since we've never used MSN Internet Access or MSN Explorer, and for all we know they're ten times better than anything AOL has ever managed to staple together and slap on a CD promising six zillion free hours or whatever. But we do think it's fair to note that MSN is yet another instance of Microsoft trying to ape its way into a market after the fact, and we're sure that the very fact that MSN is a Microsoft service will be justification enough for some Mac users to refocus their ridicule on MSN while giving AOL a much-needed (though not necessarily well-deserved) break. And everyone needs a change of pace now and again, right? Anyway, word has it that the Mac version of MSN is not being done by the Mac Business Unit, which doesn't bode well, so with a little luck, maybe we'll all have something new to be outraged about once summer rolls around. We can hardly wait.