Wow, things sure are quiet in the Mac realm today, aren't they? Almost... deceptively quiet. It's as if big, invisible gears are turning just beneath the surface of the everyday world, changing the very universe as they rumble ever onward in their inexorable revolutions, undetectable by the same mere mortals who will be forever affected by their progress. Could it be that this stillness we experience, this calm with nary a storm in sight, belies the puissant undercurrents that violently shape the future into which we plunge headlong, unknowing, blind?

Well, no. It's just a slow news day. Get over yourself. Geez.

But since nothing of earth-shattering importance is demanding inclusion in the plot right now, we'd like to update you all on our evolving impression of iChat AV: simply put, it's effin' brilliant, and here's why. On Saturday afternoon, we got a phone call from Anya's Grandma Linda and Grampy Ed, who are living their dream as nomadic RV-dwellers in the arid Southwest. (Hey, it's not our cup of tea, but to each his own.) Now, one of the distinct drawbacks of such a lifestyle is that at any given point in time, they just happen to be at least two thousand miles away from the AtAT compound, which means that the only time Grandma Linda has seen her youngest granddaughter in person was during last year's BabyTour 2002, a foolhardy jaunt across the country that the AtAT staff is unlikely to attempt again in the foreseeable future.

So Grandma Linda's only regular "contact" with Anya consists of checking out photos on her granddaughter's infrequently-updated Mac.com homepage via whatever Internet access might be available at the public library in whichever Southwestern town she happens to be visiting at the time. (Said public libraries invariably have Wintels sans QuickTime, so Grandma doesn't even get to see the video clips.) But that brings us to Saturday's phone call, when Grandma Linda told us that she and Grampy Ed were in a mall in Las Vegas and standing outside a store with a huge glowing white Apple logo out front.

We should probably have mentioned that the Apple retail stores are also effin' brilliant. One of the staff kindly hooked them up with iChat AV on an iSight-equipped PowerBook, and before long, Grandma Linda was seeing her granddaughter for the first time in a year, live and (sortakinda) in person. Sound and video quality were both excellent, and while we've always been skeptical of videoconferencing in the past, this really was the next best thing to being there. iChat AV does a pretty spiffy job of reproducing two of five senses' representations of a face-to-face meeting, and we think Apple showed remarkable perspicacity in choosing sight and sound instead of, say, taste and smell.

Since we were using a Sony DV camcorder instead of an iSight, we were afforded a little more freedom than the traditional two-heads-talking videoconference paradigm, and thanks to the miraculous invention of the 30-foot FireWire cable, we were able to let Grandma and Grampy see-- for their first time ever-- Anya stomping around the compound, and then sitting in her high chair absorbing food through her skin (and, occasionally, through her mouth). And while we were at it, we also popped in the unedited footage of Anya's first birthday party, which they were obviously too distant to attend, so they finally got to see her first baffling experience with chocolate cake.

No, iChat AV is certainly no replacement for the "real thing," but we've now witnessed first-hand just how powerful an experience it can provide when a true face-to-face meeting just isn't possible. Special thanks to whichever staff member at Fashion Show unknowingly helped us out on Saturday by making a grandmother really, really happy. Oh, and for the stridently antisentimental faction of the viewing audience who finds nothing remotely redeeming about iChat AV enabling the long-awaited virtual reunion of a grandmother and granddaughter separated by 2700 miles of dusty road, we should also mention that the night before we had used iChat AV to watch content on our TiVo wirelessly on a PowerBook-- and then let a friend in Tennessee check it out as well. See? It's cool no matter how you look at it.

So while not terribly much Macwise is happening on this side of the planet, it sounds like there's a serious problem plaguing the good people Down Under. Right now the newswires are rife with harrowing descriptions of a shortage so crippling, so absolutely devastating that it threatens to decimate the population of Australia unless relief can soon be found. No, it's not a famine, nor a drought (at least, not in the traditional sense); they've got plenty of food, water, medicine, and every other basic need to sustain human life-- except for one. It turns out that the Australians are dangerously short on iPods. Let the philosophical implications fly, because frankly, we can't see how a just and loving supreme being could ever let something like this happen.

ARN has the ugly details; apparently resellers haven't had a reasonable supply of iPods for six weeks, and some larger dealers are "averaging a hundred calls a day" from consumers jonesing for their elusive fix. Resellers describe the situation as "disheartening" and "dire," and report backorders in the dozens. "We've been flabbergasted by demand," noted one dealer, just prior to gnawing off his own left arm in desperation. We at AtAT did a little digging and discovered that, shockingly enough, there are no emergency relief organizations that are equipped to provide iPods in the case of such a drought. The closest thing out there so far is a Red Cross pilot program that provides Creative Nomad Jukeboxes to the stricken, but in the case of an iPod shortage, putting it into play would most likely just cause a spike in the national suicide rate.

Australian resellers point the finger at Apple, hinting that it's playing the old game of hoarding its scarcest gear for its own direct sales outlet, but we're not at all sure that that's what we're seeing here; while estimated shipping times for iPods at the U.S. Apple Store are listed as either "1-3 bus. days" or "3-5 bus. days" (depending on model), all iPods at the Australian Apple Store carry a lead time of "2-3 weeks." Sounds to us like the Apple Store Australia is feeling the pinch just like everybody else. (By the way, for some interesting insight into cultural differences, compare the Top Ten lists at both stores; whereas the U.S. store includes the iPod, the iSight, the 12-inch PowerBook, the 17-inch iMac, and the top-of-the-line Power Mac G5, the Australian equivalent is dominated by QuickTime software components, blank DVDs, a USB cable, and a floppy drive. Make of that what you will.)

Some desperate Australians have taken to getting iPods via eBay, often paying more than the retail price-- but with demand that far outstripping supply, you know there won't be iPods on eBay for long. Here's hoping that Apple gets its distribution problem hammered out soon, before Australian tunesters with taste are forced to choose between life with a lesser product or the sweet, sweet release that only death may bring. Seriously, it's a tough choice-- especially for them. After all, you can't spell "antipodean" without "iPod." (Or "ant" or "ean," but that's a little beside the point.)

Now that Dell has sucked away its lead (largely through some really sleazy selling tactics that we may go into at another time), just what hope does Apple have to get back into the education game? Sure, there are occasional big wins like all those "every kid gets an iBook" programs kicking off in various counties and states, but for the most part Dell is only extending its lead as more and more school districts get suckered into thinking that Wintels are cheaper. How can Apple possibly counter that sort of thinking, particularly in an economy as tattered as this one?

Well, here's one strategy: forget about the K-12 market for a second and focus on higher education, where there's a specific need that Apple might be able to fill-- more specifically, a need that Dell just can't touch. Simply put, them colleges 'n' universities need tunes, baby! It's a well-established fact that college students start to deflate after 24 hours without music, and since many of them have trouble scraping together 89 cents for a frozen burrito, they're a lot less likely to shell out $18 or whatever for a CD than they are to fire up Limewire or Kazaa or Flibbityfoo or Oogieboogiegrackgracksoooeeeeeeee or whatever the hip and happenin' peer-to-peer thiefware happens to be that moment and download a bunch of illegal music that will surely lead to eventual blindness, heart palpitations, internal nasal warts, scurvy, and death-- followed by an eternity of fire and poking by the devil, whom, of course, the RIAA keeps on retainer for a lot of things. (We hear he makes one heck of a fine clam dip, for one thing.)

Well, what with the RIAA suing the pants off of every individual or organization that's ever even heard of downloading unlicensed music, the universities are getting a little worried about what kind of hot water their students might be dangling them over. So, according to CNET, some schools have met with music services such as Pressplay, Rhapsody, and yes, even Apple in hopes of hashing out some sort of system by which its student body could download the bejeezus out of a hefty music catalog for a flat fee.

Now, that sounds suspiciously like a subscription-based plan to us, and of course Apple doesn't do that, but given how the record labels license their stuff, an all-you-can-eat "paid version of Kazaa" isn't likely to come from anybody. But what if Apple agreed to subsidize per-song downloads by students at a participating college who also agreed to buy a slew of Macs for its labs, or push Macs as preferred or even required purchases by students? None of the other music services can offer such a package, because they don't make computers; Dell's out of the loop, too, because it doesn't sell music. So Apple's in a unique position to score some serious visibility at the nation's largest universities, if it can just find a way to crunch the numbers. What if every student who buys a Mac gets a $250 credit for iTunes Music Store purchases, and the university kicks in another $150 a semester via the usual tuition hikes?

We're just thinking out loud, here-- er, typing out loud. Thinking onscreen. Whatever. The point is, there must be some way for Apple to provide the soundtrack to the nation's colleges and universities while squeezing a bunch of Macs in the door as well. We'll leave it to the hired brains at One Infinite Loop to figure out how.