We'd like to apologize in advance if today's episode turns out subpar, but it seems there's some sort of bug making the rounds down here at the compound. At first we figured it was just seasonal allergies kicking us around as per the usual, but then we reached for a thermometer, and, well, we're pretty sure that hayfever doesn't raise one's core temperature a few degrees. So we're looking at mild fevers, chills, stuffy and achy heads, scratchy throats-- pretty much all the earmarks of your basic spring cold. However, we usually like to assume the worst, so we figure we'll just give in now and accept the fact that we all have SARS. (In addition to SARS, we also suffer from hypochondria down here at the AtAT compound. We think we probably got it from a dirty toilet seat.)

And speaking of dirty toilets (how's that for a masterful segue? And from sick people, no less!), faithful viewer caz filled us in on the latest development in the iLoo saga. Yes, people, it's now officially a saga. The story so far: Microsoft announces that its UK division is working on the iLoo, a porta-potty with built-in 'net access so people can surf and poop simultaneously. Then Microsoft corporate goes on-record to retract the original iLoo story, claiming it was just a hoax-- despite the fact that the official press release was still sitting on the microsoft.com servers. (It has since been unceremoniously yoinked, but at production time, it was still in Google's cache.) Well, here's the final (we hope) word on the subject: the Associated Press now reports that Microsoft has-- yes, you guessed it-- retracted its retraction.

Can we call 'em, or what? Mere hours after we surmised that the iLoo was indeed real and Microsoft was claiming it was a joke in an effort to save face, an MSN product manager was forced to admit that the company had "jumped the gun basically yesterday in confirming that it was a hoax, and in fact it was not." Yes, despite the fact that multiple company spokespersons had stated in no uncertain terms that the iLoo press release was an April Fool's joke (a month late, but hey, this is Microsoft), eventually "the company determined it was a real project, after all."

So now that Microsoft is reasonably sure that it was developing the iLoo, does this mean that UK-dwelling festival-goers will indeed get to experience the magic of MSN while perched on the potty as part of the most effective proposed method of spreading coliform bacteria since the tongue-operated flushing mechanism? Not so fast, folks; it seems that MSN's executive team decided that the iLoo "wasn't the best extension of our brand" and flushed the project earlier in the week. What a shame, right? But at least it's not a total loss; we figure all that research into toilets ought to come in handy in the next version of Windows.

You know, we're always a teensy bit leery of those immediate post-launch press releases that companies like to trot out in hopes of persuading Wall Street that a particular product or service is a smashing success. You know the ones: "30,000 framistans sold in first six hours of availability!" and the like. The reason they're a little shady is that they're often colored by pent-up consumer demand, and just because people bought 30,000 framistans in the first six hours doesn't mean they'll buy more than, say, twelve and a half during the rest of that week.

Which is why, when it comes to the iTunes Music Store, we took Apple's "million songs sold in one week" press release with a big ol' grain of NaCl. (For the scientifically unschooled, that's the chemical symbol for the element "Nackle.") Of course the store is going to see a lot of traffic during its first week, as everybody and their Mac-using grandmothers give the service a test drive to see if it lives up to the hype. Don't forget, out of those million songs sold during the first week, over a quarter of them were actually purchased within the first 18 hours. So there was a definite tapering off once people had satisfied their need to kick the tires.

But wait, what's this? Apple has just issued another press release, this time revealing that the iTunes Music Store has sold two million songs in its first sixteen days. Well, braid our hair and call us Heidi-- this is actually starting to look sustainable or something! Heck, if you factor out the first-day sales spike, it looks like the iTMS's weekly sales may even be increasing slightly. Roughly a million songs sold each week is definitely nothing to sneeze at, and once Apple extends the service to Windows users as promised, we imagine the numbers are going to skyrocket.

That's the great thing about music: customers can never have too much. How much they've already bought really has little to no bearing on whether or not they want to buy more. And now that Apple has harnessed the evil incarnate known as the 99-Cent One-Click Purchase, impulse buying takes on a whole new meaning. After all, what else are you going to do with a buck nowadays? Sure, with 10-10-220 you can talk to your Aunt Mildred for twenty minutes, but seriously, folks-- wouldn't you really rather rock out to your own copy of "I Can't Drive 55" than spend twenty minutes hearing about her cat's digestive problems?

Lordy help us, our heads are a-spinnin'! And yes, it's probably just because of the fever and nausea, but there's always a chance that it was actually brought on by trying to stay on top of the latest crop of PowerPC 970 rumors. To be honest, normally we're not all that interested in dishing dirt on the 970, in large part because so much of what's floating around out there exudes less credibility than, well, Microsoft discussing the iLoo. But faithful viewer Chris over at MacUnderground notes a bit of drama brewing in the seedy underworld of rumormongers, and so we figured we'd poke our spinnin' heads in and take a look.

As far as we've been able to make out, LoopRumors claims that "two large shipments of PowerPC 970 processors went to FoxConn in Taiwan, under a purchase order from Apple Computer." How many chips are in a "large shipment," you ask? Purportedly sixty thousand. And if sixty thousand next-generation PowerPCs are really on the box-buider's doorstep in Apple's name, well, that bodes well for the appearance of the long-awaited successor to the Power Mac G4 as early as next month. Woo-hoo!

The only problem, of course, is the aforementioned one of credibility. LoopRumors is a relative newcomer and as far as we can tell, their accuracy is still pretty much unproven. On top of that, posting in the MacRumors forum, the notorious Jack Campbell of MacWhispers and/or SpyMac (we're not even going to try keeping all this straight in our current condition) flat-out states that "Foxconn is not manufacturing either the new 970 PowerBook or the 970 PowerMac. There have actually been zero PPC 970 chips delivered to Foxconn. Shame on LoopRumors."

Then again, credibility is sort of an issue on that side of the fence, as well. MacWhispers is pretty new, too, and whether or not they had anything to do with it, in our book any rumormonger who's ever had a spymac.com email address is going to be sitting under the cloud of the iWalk for the rest of their lives. Frankly, we're not terribly interested in which side is right; we're far more intrigued by the prospect of Campbell's "Shame on LoopRumors" comment igniting some sort of Mac rumors site feud and/or slapfight. Whaddaya think, guys? Nine rounds of bare-knuckle boxing?