The minutes to Apple's quarterly analyst conference call are melting away faster than a Popsicle on a Pentium 4, which means that a lot of you are stressing out over the Beat The Analysts contest and whether your prediction of Apple's Q2 results was close enough to bring you glory, riches, and the adoration of millions of screaming fans (not to mention a free t-shirt or a shrinkwrapped copy of System 6.0.7), or so wildly inaccurate that we'll make fun of you publicly and you'll have to move to Nepal and raise goats to escape the constant jeering. Well, relax-- the die is cast and there's nothing you can do about it now, so you might as well put it out of your mind and accept the potential goat-herding consequences as they come.

Still, we can understand that, with so much on the line, you might be having a tough time thinking about other things, so we'll help you out a little. Perhaps you've been hearing some grumbling over the past several months from people who use free web-based email services like Yahoo! and Hotmail. Perhaps you're one of the people doing the grumbling. According to CNET, Microsoft recently made several Hotmail policy changes (including deleting free accounts that hadn't been checked for a month and blithely dumping mail from free accounts that were over their 2 MB storage quota), hoping to nudge all those freeloaders into upgrading to the $19.95-a-year "premium" account. CNET also reports that Yahoo! is asking customers to ante up $29.99 a year for certain formerly free mail services, such as Mail Forwarding.

This all sounds vaguely reminiscent of the free ISP craze that crashed and burned in the dotcom wreckage. So is the free email ride over? Not necessarily. Remember, signing up for an iTools account is still free, and that comes with a Mac.com email account. "But AtAT," we hear you whine, "that doesn't count, because I can't check that mail in a web browser at work like I can with Hotmail and Yahoo!" Oh, no? Try telling that to faithful viewer Brian Burrow, who just pointed out that Apple is beta-testing its new Webmail service. Not so gabby now, are ya, Mr. Smarty-Pants?

It's just a beta, as we said, but so far there's lots to like about Apple's attempt to out-Hotmail Hotmail. For one thing, it's got an interface immediately familiar to users of Mac OS X's Mail application-- spiffy. Webmail can auto-reply to messages, as well as forward all email to another account. In our quick test, attaching files worked like a charm. It's even got a cute feature in its preferences that lets you upload a photo that will be inserted into all of your outgoing messages as a graphical signature. You can use it to check a separate third-party POP account, as well as your Mac.com email. Heck, it's even available in English and Japanese, and we bet other languages are coming. Best of all, there's a reasonably healthy 5 MB mail limit, and you don't need to sell your soul to Passport to use it. Heck, if Apple could find some way to sync up the Mac OS X Address Book to Webmail's online version, life would be sweet indeed.

So Apple may well have a Hotmail-killer on its hands, here-- provided it doesn't do something sketchy like charging extra for iTools members to use it. We suppose we'll see once Apple officially rolls out the release version. In the meantime, play with the beta, email Apple your feedback, and try to keep your mind off of the possibility of a lifetime of Nepalese goat-herding. It's just not healthy.

SuperDrives for everyone! Wow, it's hard to believe that it was only about fifteen months ago that Apple unleashed its DVD-burning wonder upon an eager world-- and that it was only available in one system, the top-of-the-line $3499 Power Mac. Ouch. But as of two months ago, the landscape had shifted pretty drastically; not only was the SuperDrive standard equipment in two out of three new Power Mac configurations, but it was also built into the high-end flat-panel iMac.

There's a bit of a price gap, though. Whereas well-to-do consumers could jump into DVD creation for only $1799 (well, $1899 after Steve's "adjustment"), pros needed to shell out $2299 for the cheapest SuperDrive-equipped Power Mac. That's a whole lot better than the $3499 from a year ago, but it's still several hundred bucks more than the consumer offering, and for viewing purposes, the iMac comes with a 15-inch LCD display, whereas the Power Mac comes with, um, a port. But faithful viewer Smitty informs us that Apple's evening up the score a little, and thankfully not by hiking the iMac's price again; if you wander over to the Apple Store, you'll notice a nifty little link in the sidebar announcing that the SuperDrive is "now available on all Power Mac G4s."

It's true! Toss a $1599 entry-level 800 MHz Power Mac in your virtual cart and mess with its build-to-order options; you'll find that you can upgrade it from its stock CD-RW drive to a SuperDrive for a mere two hundred clams. Which means, of course, that the cheapest SuperDrive-equipped Power Mac is now available for $1799-- a hundred bucks cheaper than the top-of-the-line iMac. Oh, sure, you still need a display for that Power Mac, but the prices are a little more comparable now, plus you get all that expandability. Most importantly, it's just one more way for Apple to get those SuperDrives out there among the populace. There's definitely some sort of secret world-domination thing going on here, and we strongly suspect that once Apple has a million functional SuperDrives dotted all over the planet, they're all going to act as Reality Distortion Field repeaters in a vast global network of pure Steve-quality will-bending energy. Or something like that.

All that's left, of course, is for Apple to work out some way to cram a slot-loading SuperDrive into a PowerBook so that people can unwittingly carry these RDF repeaters on buses, trains, planes, and other places where desktop systems aren't likely to be found, so that even commuters won't be spared the effects of Steve's will. Patience, folks; as certain entities have hinted previously, that sort of thing might be only an Expo away. And sure, we'll eventually all be mindless slaves to the Mothership, but at least we'll be burning DVDs. And hey, we're Mac users-- aren't we at least halfway there already?

Are you feeling a little left out because, as a Mac user, you're simply not affected by the vast majority of gaping Microsoft security holes floating around out there? Yeah, yeah, we know-- it's lonely at the top, "it's not easy being green," yadda yadda yadda. But cheer up, Bucko, because if you've been feeling neglected by Microsoft's Department of Shafting Users Via Security Flaws (just one of many departments within Microsoft's massive Shafting Users Division), you'll be glad to hear that they're finally showing you a little more attention.

This isn't just some chintzy little "serial number glitch can shut down Office" thing, either. As pointed out by faithful viewer Torgo, there's an article over at CNET reporting that there's a "critical security flaw" in several of Microsoft's Mac products that can be exploited by Nasty People to crash your system or "run arbitrary commands." According to the article, "the flaw affects all Office programs, but is only considered a critical issue on Internet Explorer for Mac OS 8, 9, and X, Outlook Express 5.0.2, and Entourage 2001 and v.X." (Say, does that imply that IE is a part of Office? Why, that's just plain silly! Everyone knows that it's an inseparable part of Windows!)

Microsoft has posted a patch (reportedly some three months after the company was informed of the problem), though we imagine that some of you might want to hold off on applying it for a little while-- just to savor the rare instance of suffering from Microsoft security bugs that "don't affect Microsoft's products for Windows PCs." Finally, some security flaws just for us! It's about freakin' time. You know, if Steve Jobs had really been thinking when he put together that technology agreement back in 1997, he would have insisted that Microsoft continue to provide Office and security holes for five years, because nothing makes us Mac users feel more like second class citizens than watching the Windows users get all the good bugs...