Whoops, time for another weekly erratum dredged up from the murky depths of sleep deprivation, folks! Yesterday, when we let Anya take the reins and she (apparently) predicted the inclusion of a SuperDrive in those brand spankin' new PowerBooks due to surface any ol' minute now, we blithely asserted that "the entire Mac rumor community" was expecting otherwise; unfortunately, we'd wandered into the realm of hyperbole (who, US?!) and obscured the truth. As faithful viewer ydm kindly points out, whereas both Mac OS Rumors and Think Secret are adamant about portable SuperDrives being a no-show and AppleInsider simply says their fate is "unknown," lone wolf Mac Rumors has steadfastly maintained that the SuperDrive will appear in a PowerBook this week.

Indeed, Mac Rumors has corrected us on this point itself, after a fashion-- though we'd like to mention that we certainly didn't intend to claim "to be the only rumor site to predict SuperDrives with the PowerBook," as the Mac Rumors staff states. (For one thing, we hate being called a "rumor site" as much as Max the Hyperkinetic Rabbity Thing hates being called "Hello Kitty.") All we meant to imply was that it was charmingly quaint for a six-month-old to expect portable SuperDrives when the conventional wisdom overwhelmingly predicts otherwise. You know, kinda like the way an earnest letter to Santa Claus is cute, or a seven-year-old kid setting a bear trap for the Easter Bunny makes you go "awwwwww."

Still, we fully admit that we shouldn't have referred to "the entire Mac rumor community" without including Mac Rumors, and therefore, mea culpa: we apologize wholeheartedly for the omission, and assure you all that it was done out of ignorance, not malice. As for Anya's unshakable faith in imminent DVD-burning PowerBooks, we now suspect that she reads Mac Rumors when our backs are turned. Granted, that would imply she's either managed to 1) network her Mac Classic II and install a web browser entirely on her own, or 2) learn to climb desks for Power Mac access despite being (seemingly, at least) unable to sit up unsupported-- but at this point we're not ruling anything out.

Meanwhile, as of broadcast time, we're probably just mere hours away from finding out if Mac Rumors-- and Anya-- were right. Personally, the question's rather moot for us anyway, since we're far less interested in being able to burn DVDs on an airplane than we are in seeing if Apple finally punches through that psychological 1 GHz barrier in its portable products. But then again, even that's kind of moot, since we're really still planning on sucking at least a couple more years' worth of duty out of our Pismo anyway. And as we all know and respectfully acknowledge, everything is all about us. So there.

Say, does everyone remember when Adobe was playing the role of the Evil Non-Carbonizing Villain and rumors were flying that the lack of a Mac OS X-native Photoshop was actually the result of an epic spite-fest between Adobe and Apple over the development of iPhoto? Well, while we were ever so pleased when we were finally able to upgrade to Photoshop 7 and get our image-processing tasks out of Classic, we don't mind telling you that we were a little bummed out to have to wave goodbye to the Great Apple-Adobe Feud plotline of 2001. It was a classic, to be sure.

Today, of course, Adobe is actually one of the better developers from a Mac OS X perspective, having released a whole stable of major Carbonized applications for our Aquatic computing pleasure. But that's okay, because Mac fans looking for another fight have long since moved on to demonizing Quark, instead. QuarkXPress is a critical design app and it still isn't Mac OS X-native, despite a major 5.0 upgrade that shipped in January-- some ten months after Mac OS X hit the scene. Just what the fuzzy is up with that?

Well, we always just assumed it was a stunningly potent combination of really poor management and inadequate development resources, but as it turns out, at some point there were apparently plenty of rumors about an Apple-Quark tiff that led to a dragging of heels on the Carbonization front, and we were just asleep at the switch and missed them. A MacUser interview with Quark's director of product management makes a passing mention of these rumors, alluding to whispers of a "bust up" between the two companies and the supposed cancellation of the Mac OS X version of QuarkXPress 5 when Apple allegedly refused to help fund its development. Of course, MacUser then states that "none of this is true," according to director Jürgen Kurz-- but really, that's beside the point, isn't it?

Anyway, for those of you on pins and needles about QuarkXPress 6, buckle down for some more serious waiting: Kurz states that it won't hit the shelves until March at the earliest, and maybe not until summer-- which isn't going to do much good for Apple's flagging sales of Power Macs into the design market, especially since systems shipping from January onward won't even boot into Mac OS 9. (Sure, there's always Classic, but who drops several thou on a new Mac to run anything in Classic?) Hark, do we hear the distinctive sound of teeth grinding in Cupertino? Let the feuding commence!

So asketh Esquire: "Isn't it Great to be a Man?" Well, uh, we're not exactly sure, bub; there's that whole shortened life expectancy thing, for one. Male pattern baldness is not commonly classified as a picnic, either. And when it comes to traditional Western gender roles, men are pretty much expected to watch sports on TV, whereas women get to scope out Lifetime, which features such can't-miss drama as 90210's Tori Spelling in the bestest-named movie ever: Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? So, you know, there are pluses and minuses to be considered.

What we do know is that it's definitely great to be a man named Jonathan Ive-- provided you're the Jonathan Ive whom Esquire has just named one of the 43 "Best and Brightest" innovators in the U.S. this time around. Mr. Ive, as you are no doubt aware, is Uncle Steve's master design guru, and the guy responsible for the distinctive flavor of Apple products ever since the original iMac turned heads back in May of 1998. You can invariably spot him in Apple's little promo films whenever a major new product is released, chatting about the design of said product with an enthusiasm and a subdued intensity that gives just a hint of the massive gears turning in his head. (No, not literally. At least, we don't think so.)

Wondering just what makes a magazine with a pictorial of Mary-Louise Parker posing-- and we quote-- "buck nekkid" an authority on who's better and brighter than whom? Well, to its credit, a couple of decades ago Esquire included one Mr. Steve Jobs in its list, so the names probably aren't just pulled out of a hat. Ive is listed in the "Culture" category, and shares his "Best and Brightest" designation with such remarkable folks as Bill Frist (a U.S. senator and heart surgeon), Will Wright (the guy who created The Sims), and Matthew Rabin (a "guiding light in behavioral economics"-- and you all know how hard it is to be a "guiding light" these days).

So congratulations to Jonathan Ive on this latest honor-- and for our money, any magazine that would publish an article called "10 Things You Don't Know About Women" written by '80s John-Hughes-flick staple Molly Ringwald clearly knows exactly what it's doing.