Okay, you can stop worrying now. Well, not generally, of course, because your life is, indeed, one big ol' mess. (Hoooo boy, where did you ever go so wrong?) But at least you can stop fretting about an IBM-Apple rift tearing asunder the two companies' relationship just as Big Blue looks to become Apple's G5-makin' savior. We mentioned last week that things might get a little tense, seeing as how IBM has just partnered up with Threshold Digital Research Labs, a venture aiming to dethrone His Steveness's other company as King of Computer-Generated Movies by becoming, as they put it, the "next-generation Pixar." From what we see and hear, though, Steve doesn't have too much to worry about from Threshold, and he probably knows it.

Granted, there was all that talk about Threshold making breakthroughs in the technical aspects of CG film production, so the company may not be putting its best foot forward, but we're seeing nothing even remotely Pixarian in quality at Threshold's web site. (What, something like this is supposed to trump The Incredibles at the box office?) We've also been informed by those ever-so-reliable "unnamed sources" that Threshold is not exactly following in Pixar's footsteps-- that is, unless Steve's past includes a foray into live online porn (including personally, um, "auditioning" the talent) of which we were previously unaware. Additionally, Threshold's debut feature film, Food Fight, has been described in, shall we say, "less than glowing terms," and sources claim that despite having been in the works for about four centuries and rewritten eleventy-jillion times, it's unlikely to improve at its core. So even if the 6,392-character epic winds up looking fabulous, we're told it's still going to stink up the joint.

Note that we can't tell you if any of this is actually true; we can only tell you that somebody told us that it's true. But if it is, then there are no worries about IBM's partnership with Threshold souring Big Blue's relationship with Apple. For our money, just about the only thing that might put a strain on the Apple-IBM partnership right now would be if, say, Apple were slated to ship its make-or-break Power Mac G5 in the month beginning at the end of this week and IBM hadn't even started making the chips that need to go inside.

On an entirely unrelated note, did you see this InfoWorld article (we came across it via Insanely Great Mac) about IBM's amazing new chip fabrication plant? It, uh, just happens to mention that the plant hasn't even started making the chips that need to go inside.

Yes, apparently a tour guide at the Fishkill fab "confided that the PowerPC 970 (Apple's G5) is not yet in production in Fishkill." Hmmm. Do we sense some kindred spirits over in Fishkill who procrastinate almost as badly as we do? For what it's worth, we doubt it's time to panic just yet, since there are all sorts of possibilities that make this situation far less dire than it might sound. For instance, while the article was published just last Friday, it may well have been written long before-- and the tour obviously took place even before that. The Fishkill guide also insisted that "it takes no time at all to get a new chip into the line," so maybe IBM can spit out all the G5s that Apple needs in about a day and a half. And hey, maybe the first batch of G5s is already done, but it was done at a different plant-- although we consider that a bit unlikely, given how heavily the Fishkill facility is featured in Apple's G5 marketing blitz.

In any case, we sincerely doubt that, after all of its delay-related nightmares with Motorola G4s, Apple would put itself in a position to repeat the same hassles with IBM. Mark our words: one way or another, the Power Mac G5 will ship on time, and in quantity. Of course, if it doesn't, the resulting stock crash will give us enough hair-raising plot material for a solid month, so hey, it's win-win!

Okay, people, you know us by now; we practically breathe melodrama, and we live to sow the seeds of panic and angst among the unsuspecting general Mac-using populace. And yet even we aren't going to hand you this malarkey about your iTunes Music Store downloads suddenly self-destructing if you set foot outside of the United States. Faithful viewer Daniel Blanken was the first to alert us to the report that surfaced at MacNN last Friday; reportedly an iTMS customer named Declan McCullagh claimed that after moving to Canada, all of his purchased songs went up in smoke: "I've now discovered that if you leave the country, your songs may just disappear." Consternation! Uproar! Collusion between Apple and the U.S. Government to dissuade citizens from moving to other, lesser lands!

Of course, if you actually follow the link provided at MacNN to the original report, the affected customer wasn't Declan McCullagh at all; Declan just runs the list to which actual affected iTMS customer Shawn Yeager originally posted his complaint. In addition to missing this minor detail, MacNN's chosen headline, "iTMS songs won't play outside U.S.," seems needlessly alarmist (that's our job, dagnabbit!), since that's not what Shawn's complaint says at all. It's not that iTMS songs contain amazing new software-only global positioning technology and immediately overwrite themselves with zeroes as soon as you dare to leave the confines of the country; nor is it that purchased songs on your PowerBook will simply refuse to play once you cross the border. All Shawn is saying is that, following some unrelated technical difficulty, he reinstalled everything on his PowerBook, including his backed-up iTMS music; when he tried to play said music, iTunes required him to reauthorize his PowerBook, as one would expect; and that he was unable to reauthorize because, after moving to Canada, he no longer had a credit card with a U.S. billing address, which is apparently a requirement for authorization.

Now, note that we're not saying that Shawn doesn't have a valid complaint; if you buy a slew of music while living here in the U.S. and then you move to another country, you won't be able to reauthorize your Mac to play that music if you need to (unless you still have a credit card with a U.S. billing address). That does strike us as a little unfair; worse yet, it implies that if you ever decide to stay in the U.S. but cancel all of your credit cards, you might be prevented from reauthorizing any Macs. (Then again, living in this country without at least one credit card is tantamount to high treason anyway, so maybe that's not so far off the mark.) But people have been talking about this issue as if just hopping on a flight to Japan for a business trip will cause your PowerBook to burst into flame as soon as the plane leaves U.S. airspace, just because you had an iTMS copy of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" on there, and it's just not true. Somebody might set fire to your PowerBook because they can't stand ABBA, but that's an entirely different matter, and hardly Apple's fault.

In fact, we don't believe one exists in this case, but if you're dead set on finding a conspiracy, here, you'd do much better to focus on Shawn Yeager himself, whose bio mentions that he "was responsible for the development of one of the earliest online music retail operations, musicdirect.com." MusicDirect is, obviously, at least peripherally a competitor of the iTMS. Furthermore, Shawn also worked for Microsoft-- as "part of an elite team of business development and technology professionals tasked with answering Netscape's threat to their dominance in desktop and server technology." His main task was apparently to "drive adoption of Microsoft's then-nascent browser and web server software." (So the whole IE/IIS thing is his fault.)

Determining Shawn's motives, real or imagined, for discrediting Apple's iTMS are left as an exercise for the conspiracy nut. Meanwhile, feel free to travel overseas with iTMS music-- just don't cancel those credit cards.

Quick, everyone start practicing your "Irrepressible Optimism Despite Everything History Has Ever Taught Us" faces, because you're going to need an appropriate expression to wear the next time you wander into Best Buy. You all know that the Keeper of the Big Yellow Tag has dropped the ball and been canned twice with the whole Apple-Authorized Reseller thing. Or is it three times? We lost count at some point over the course of the past six years. Let's see, there was the original retail shakeout in 1998, when Best Buy got the hook for using the display Performas as the official test targets for its grand "Can the staff extinguish a flaming computer entirely by spitting on it?" experiments. Then they came back on board to get some of that sweet, sweet iMac action and left again after having botched the entire campaign to a degree that can only be described as "unparalleled." Or possibly "brick-stupid."

As far as we can recall, though, there haven't been any further splits since Best Buy came back yet again last September just to sell iPods-- and apparently that's been going well enough that Apple has renewed confidence in Best Buy's ability to move Macs, too. Rumors of yet another unholy alliance have been swirling for some time, and now Mac Rumors reports that, yes, selected Best Buy stores will once again be selling Macs-- some possibly as early as today, although the official launch is apparently next month. The test program is reportedly "focused in California and Illinois, with scattered stores in other states (AZ, VA, NY, MD, MN)." If you happen to live near a Best Buy in once of these locations, head on in and maybe you'll see a wide selection of Macs available for sale. If you hurry, you may even see them before they're set on fire and covered in phlegm.

Oh, but wait-- things are going to be different this time! Apple has a plan to keep Best Buy's Macs both unsinged and mucus-free, and that plan is the old "Do The Stores' Job For Them" strategy: Apple will stick its own full-time sales reps into Best Buy stores, who will presumably field customers' questions about Apple products with polite and accurate answers-- in stark contrast to responding with tear gas and rubber bullets, as was store policy previously. This tactic has worked well in the past; it's transformed shopping for a Mac at CompUSA into an experience that, while certainly not perfect, at least no longer has Mac users longing for the release that only merciful death can bring. Woo-hoo!

Provided that Apple can break the Curse of the Yellow Tag, this is all ultimately good news. Sure, buying a Mac in a dank warehouse surrounded by the decaying corpses of fallen bargain-hunters falls a little short of the posh Apple retail store experience, but there are a lot more Best Buy stores scattered across the land; location, location, location. And putting Macs where "regular people" shop for electronic equipment ought to improve mind share, and possibly even-- dare we say it?-- market share. We've also heard from viewers who have encountered some very liberal interpretations of the chain's price-matching policy, which might score you a sweet deal if you're devious enough to, say, write in lower prices on a CompUSA circular with a black Sharpie. Besides, we've been holding our breath since September waiting for the Best Buy-iPod relationship to crash and burn, and it never has; maybe this latest arrangement really is going to work out after all. Maybe.