Sweet mother of blessed never-being-satisfiedness, just what does it take to make you people happy? Yesterday we busted out the Tarot cards and risked both eternal damnation and permanent carpet stains by consorting with the netherworld for hints about upcoming Apple hardware developments; making that major personal sacrifice allowed us to bring you spirit whispers of what might spell the imminent end of the single-button mouse for the Macintosh platform. But what do we find in our inbox instead of effusive thanks and promises to name your first-born children after us? Complaints from faithful viewers like FrozenTundra, who claims "disappointment" that our hardware scrying only turned up a glimpse of the future of input devices, and demands for "real" hardware news for a change.

Hey, c'mon, folks, bear in mind that the Spirits Beyond generally only maintain about a 60-day window into the future (they have to pay for Premium Service to see any further) and Apple has pretty much publicly stated that no new Macs are on the horizon in that time frame. Mix in the fact that if you're looking for the alleged inside scoop on future Apple projects, AtAT's really not the place to get it-- go harangue Mac OS Rumors or AppleInsider (or what's left of it, anyway); they're into the illicit trade secrets, whereas we're all about the ensuing drama. On top of all that, we don't exactly hear anyone rushing to offer to rent us a rug shampooer to get all this ectoplasmic residue out of the shag in the living room. Yuck.

But never let it be said that we don't go that extra mile for our oh-so-demanding viewers; haunted by the thought of your collective bitter disappointment, we tossed down a circle of salt, hauled out the graveyard dirt, and summoned up a minor poltergeist of our acquaintance that's been stealing single socks from the dryers in coin-op laundromats in and around Cupertino for the past few years. When forced to manifest himself on this plane, he's a nice enough free-floating apparition, as far as the overly-slimy ones go; his name's Shemp. (No, not that Shemp.) Anyway, as he permanently wrecked some floor-length drapes and gave the Scotchgard on our couch a serious workout, we asked him if he'd heard any poop from the other spirits on what might emerge later this summer, Mac-wise.

Sadly, Shemp was sorely lacking in the dirt department as far as details go, but he thought he may have heard something from the ghost of one of the decomposing bodies stacked in Uncle Steve's office coat closet about yet another PowerBook revision slated for an appearance at New York's Macworld Expo or thereabouts; apparently we're looking at one more incremental boost of the same basic titanium design, with bigger disks and faster G4s (maybe 800 MHz, maybe not) and-- here's the big news, if it's true-- a slot-loading SuperDrive. Ooh la la.

So was it worth psychically dragging Shemp's corporeal essence three thousand miles across our physical plane (not to mention forging a blood debt to the hungry wraiths that walk behind the walls and ruining just about every upholstered surface in our living room) just to hear vague second-hand spirit mutterings about a SuperDrive-packin' PowerBook on deck for this summer? Well, we sure hope so, because there's no way we're doing that again, even if we do survive the night without our souls being gnawed to pieces by the Harvester Shades. Or, at least, if we do, we're putting tarps down first.

It kinda makes you wonder whether Apple realizes what it's gotten itself into, don't you think? Even when you take the substantial fan base of drooling Apple mavens and chuck out everybody who wasn't foaming at the mouth for Apple to release a new PDA to replace the Newton, you're still left with a whole lot of drool. And it's worth noting that all of this excess saliva was secreted over a product that not only still doesn't actually exist, but whose existence as even a work-in-progress has also been completely and unambiguously denied by official Apple personnel as high up as Smilin' Phil Schiller. Meanwhile, the very notion of an Apple PDA has been flat-out ridiculed (albeit in supremely diplomatic fashion) by The Stevester Himself-- more than once, in fact.

And then Apple unveiled the iPod-- which is, of course, not a handheld computer per se, but it did reveal that Apple wasn't religiously opposed to creating consumer electronics in a handheld form factor. Things got even more interesting when Apple shipped the iPod 1.1 software, which allows iPod owners to tote their contact data along on their shiny little music thingies. Suddenly Apple's a lot closer to PDA territory than the company's "PDAs? No one uses 'em!" stance would imply.

But remember those drooling fans? Well, they're not planning to wait. Faithful viewer Jeff Duran pointed out a Wired article all about how people are hacking the 'Pod to do more than just play music. There are programs to upload and view news headlines from the 'net, ones to store freeform text snippets, ones to transfer calendar events and schedules, etc. Sure, the 'Pod may lack any sort of reasonable PDA input system (we don't even want to think about entering text with the scroll wheel), but until Apple releases a PDA of its own, iPod fans are having fun pushing their players in zany and useful new directions.

But it was faithful viewer Ryan Cousineau who pointed out one tidbit that we had missed: apparently Apple went and Steved the PodMate! For the uninitiated, the PodMate was a nifty hardware hack introduced at last January's Expo by those evil geniuses at Griffin Technology; when connected to an iPod's headphone jack, it allows said iPod to function as a universal remote control. Many's the night since then that we've fallen asleep smiling, eagerly awaiting the day when we could control our TiVo with our PodMate-enabled iPods.

Unfortunately, according to Wired, Griffin "was planning to sell it, but withdrew it from the market at Apple's request." Sounds to us that Apple is at least open to the idea of the iPod evolving into a PDA, but Steve draws the line at letting the iPod turn into something that controls the boob tube. Somebody needs to sit down with that man and help him get his priorities straight...

A few of you may recall that when Apple brought wireless networking to the masses with AirPort back in the fall of 1999, there was a minor issue with how the technology affected the French military. No, prolonged exposure didn't make them sprout purple antennae and spontaneously start speaking in Swedish, or anything like that (at least, so far), but apparently in France the 2.4 GHz waveband where AirPort likes to hang out and do its thing is reserved for the military, and therefore Apple was basically stepping on a few government toes. It seems that the French government felt that an AirPort-equipped iBook was theoretically capable of scrambling defense force communications, which, okay, is kinda neat-- but the penalty for doing so is a fine of thirty grand and half a year chained up in the Bastille. Sacre bleu!

Now, apparently private citizens can apply for special permission to use the 2.4 GHz wavelength, but that's a hassle-- imagine having to file for a special zoning waiver or something just to use an AirPort Base Station in your house. What's worse, permission is generally granted for "local, fixed networks," but things get a little hairier when it comes to wireless-enabled laptops which can be carried all over France, scrambling military communications at every turn and leaving the entire country's defenses in a state of utter higgledy-piggledy. (Well, actually, given AirPort's 150-foot range, that'd take some doing, but in theory it's a dire scenario indeed.)

But we've got some good news for French Macophiles itching for less-regulated AirPort use: according to a Macworld UK article dredged up by faithful viewer foniksonik, the French government is looking for ways to "relax the rules" restricting the use of the 2.4 GHz band. Apparently French technophiles are bummed at not being able to score wireless 'net access down at Le Starbucks (okay, fine, there are no Starbucks locations in France yet, but give 'em time, folks-- they're already across the Channel in England, and they spread like weeds), and so it's possible that relatively soon people will gain "the right to use wireless LAN technology to offer Internet access in heavily trafficked areas such as stations, airports, and hotels." Should that come to pass, we imagine that Apple France will enjoy a nice little uptick in AirPort sales shortly thereafter-- provided that the country doesn't get invaded because all of its military bases are scrambled, that is.