We don't know about you, but right about now is when we usually start getting really antsy about the holidays. Specifically, since we engage the annual gift-giving occasion known as Christmas, by mid-November or thereabouts our brains make the causal connection between gift-giving and gift-getting, so we get kinda itchy for loot. By the time the Silk Nog starts showing up in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, our gift lust reaches a fever pitch-- and there's usually well over a month to go before the goods start flowing. What to do? What to do?!

Well, eating ourselves into a four-day food coma on Thanksgiving helps take the edge off, but that's still two weeks away, so in the meantime we like to get our minds off Christmas loot by speculating endlessly about Macworld loot. January's just around the corner, after all, and since nothing Uncle Steve may have up his sleeve will materialize in time to find its way under our tree this year, thinking about it doesn't get us all drooly and foaming, so it's reasonably therapeutic. Besides, there's plenty to think about, since there are definitely items in Apple's product line that will be ripe for a Stevenote revision.

For example, AppleInsider reports that "PowerPC G5 chips operating at frequencies up to 2.5 GHz have been in sampling since as early as March," and Power Macs using those chips will finally surface "by the end of January." The report implies a single 2.0 GHz G5 at the low end of the Power Mac bell curve, with dual 2.5 GHz processors taking over in the top spot. That's slightly less astounding than previous unconfirmed reports of "dual 2.8 GHz by February," and therefore slightly more believable. (After all, 2.8 GHz would put the PowerPC within 400 MHz of the current fastest Pentium 4, and as Mac users who lived through Motorola's G4 development years, we're simply not mentally prepared for such a scenario.)

But say you're not so much the "huge, imposing metal tower" type; maybe you're more in the iMac's target demographic. Well, get this-- AppleInsider adds to the gathering buzz that the iMac might be going G5 in January, even as MacRumors cites a Kodawarisan news item from last week which (according to a Babelfish translation) clearly states that "according to information, when Cube which makes one for new iMac where at the die manufacturer for the resin formation of Taiwan, it differed from the frame of the current model completely the die of form has been produced, it is thing." You don't say!

For those of you looking for something slightly more intelligible to read (oh, you're no fun anymore), MacRumors's posted translation refers to info leaked by a Taiwanese resin mold manufacturer, which describes the "completely new case" as "curiously different" and "cube-shaped." Cube-shaped? Could this be the Return of the Cube? Was Apple not just blowing smoke when it said that "there is a small chance it will reintroduce an upgraded model of the unique computer in the future"? (Remember, Apple didn't kill the Cube, it merely "suspended production.")

So forget the sugar plums, and forget the sack full of loot-- now we've got visions of G5-based Cube II iMacs dancing in our heads, set to debut in January to commemorate the Mac's twentieth birthday even as new Power Macs punch a brand new hole in the Mac's performance ceiling. Santa, Shmanta; we need to write a letter to Steve Claus. It is thing!

See, here's what we love about AtAT viewers: yesterday, when we proposed that Apple use the slogan "world's aluminumest, most perforated personal computer" to market the G5 in the UK without running afoul of truth-in-advertising watchdog groups, fully four dozen people wrote in with the correction that, in the UK, the word should be "aluminiumest"-- while only one took issue with the fact that neither "aluminumest" nor "aluminiumest" are words in the first place. If you ask us, there's something downright poetic about a universal laserlike focus on one tiny detail like a single missing geographically-dictated letter (and such a skinny letter, too) while the larger problem goes almost completely unaddressed. Why, it's almost like... like... the U.S. Presidential election campaigns!

And so, in keeping with the spirit of missing the forest for the woefully inconsequential trees, we may as well revisit the single most important utterly trivial issue yet to arise on the campaign trail: the computing platform preference of the candidates. Apparently the woman who raised the "Mac or PC?" topic at last week's Rock the Vote Democratic debate has been hounded for asking such an irrelevant question, but faithful viewer Joe Stern notes that according to the Washington Post, she was spoon-fed the question by CNN in a feeble attempt to relate. Word to your mother.

Anyway, the genie's out of the bottle now, so it's important that we get the details of each candidate's platform preference correct. Faithful viewer Don Livingstone was the first to note that, while it's not noted in the transcript, John Kerrey also replied that he uses a Mac-- this has been confirmed by several AtAT viewers who watched the debate live. So that means there are two Mac-using Democratic hopefuls, which will come as a sharp relief to all of you who wanted to vote for a Mac user but just couldn't see your way clear to voting for someone with hair like that.

Meanwhile, the nature of that photo of Bush near a PowerBook (i.e. "Is it his, or is he just phoning the bomb squad?") has finally come to light: faithful viewer David Poves notes a ZDNN interview in which Bush plainly states, "I guess I'm not supposed to be talking about brands, but since Michael Dell is my good friend and Dell is a Texas company, I'm the owner of a Dell computer." ("I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm doing it anyway." We suspect we'll soon be getting email from viewers in the United Nations telling us that they're experiencing the wildest sense of déjà vu.)

So by his own admission, not only is Bush not a Mac user, but he's also one of Mike Dell's bestest buddies-- which means that if you had been planning on voting for him solely because of conclusions drawn from his proximity to a PowerBook in a single photograph, you may want to make alternate plans. Incidentally, Bush says he only uses his Dell for email, checking the weather, and "occasionally... for research"-- which prompted ZDNN to respond, apparently without a hint of irony, "You sound pretty tech-savvy." Wow. Slow-pitch softball, anyone?

And in the Tempest in a Teacup department, faithful viewer Dracomere informs us that WIRED has stumbled upon the most fascinating sociological development since the explosive popularity of hats shaped like monkeys among the young executive set: apparently on college campuses, students are being judged by their peers based on the contents of their shared iTunes music libraries. "Thanks to the ability of Apple's iTunes to share music collections over local networks, it is now possible to judge someone's taste in music-- or lack of it-- in a way that previously required a certain level of intimacy."

The result? That one guy you always thought looked pretty cool is revealed to be nothing more than a Tiffany-listening, Spice Girls-loving Michael Bolton fan with no fewer than six remixes of "La Macarena" in his library. The resulting bigotry has been termed "playlistism" at Wesleyan University, and wary students are jettisoning music that they like but may not meet with the approval of their peer group. In a similar vein, people aware of their lack of taste have taken to scoping out the playlists of the popular kids and then adding the same music to their own collections in a somewhat pathetic attempt to "pass for cool."

Of course, since you have to choose to share your iTunes music in the first place, playlistism isn't really monkey-hat-proportioned in its sociological significance. If you don't want people judging you based on your taste in music, don't click the little "Share my music" checkbox in the Preferences in the first place. Think your extensive collection of obscure shoegazer music and J-Pop will pass public muster, but that one Garth Brooks album (the soul patch that haunts your dreams) will get you duct-taped naked to the cafeteria ceiling? That's what "Share selected playlists" is for. Or if you want to share with friends without exposing yourself to public ridicule, check the "Require password" box and only give the secret phrase to trustworthy friends who already know that you own every recording A Flock of Seagulls ever released and won't sell you down the river for a cheap laugh.

That said, playlistism is likely only to benefit Apple in the long run; in addition to the simple joy of being able to listen to scads of music shared by fellow students, collegegoers are also amusing themselves playlististically by selecting random iTunes libraries on the network and trying to guess what sort of person might have such a music collection. (We assume the drinking game can't be far behind.) This all leads to ever-increasing usage of iTunes (and consequently ever-increasing mind share for Apple) as more and more students seek to boost their cool quotients by the careful application of-- and addition to-- public playlist data.

Meanwhile, the incontrovertible truth is that one simply cannot be cool without owning an iPod. So there.