Okay, now we've got the Christmas spirit! Well, Orthodox Armenian Christmas, anyway. It turns out that our suggestion yesterday about postponing the Christmas celebrations until the day of the Stevenote was right on the money; by some standards and calendars, January 6th really is Christmas after all. Many thanks to faithful viewer Shelby Davis for pointing that out. It lends the whole event a certain sense of occasion, you know? We get the feeling that this so-called "coincidence" foreshadows announcements of life-changing significance-- or at least something good 'n' festive. Suppose Steve will come out dressed in red and white for the affair?

Well, even if he doesn't, it's the gear that counts, and as everyone knows, the buzz is all about low-cost, lower-storage miniPods-- and there's some good news on that front: Think Secret has leaped into the fray, with "confirmed" reports of new "pocket-size iPods" (what, the current models require a wheelbarrow to cart around?) that will indeed be available in the previously-rumored 2 GB and 4 GB capacities. And when Think Secret goes so far as to say that something's been "confirmed" by "reliable sources," you can practically take that stuff to the bank. It may even be actual legal tender in some countries, we're not sure. The upshot is, at this point we're having a really tough time keeping a prudent facade of skepticism in place. We really think this is going to happen. Allow us to do a dorky little dance.

But wait, it gets soooo much better. Whereas AppleInsider had only reported that the prices of these little doohickeys would "fall below the $200 threshold," Think Secret goes so far as to say that the 2 GB model will cost "around $100." A hundred bucks for an iPod?! It was barely two months ago when Steve said that Apple would "love to have a $100 iPod" but "didn't know how to do it"; if Think Secret is correct, it sounds like Apple learned pretty darn fast. Sheesh, you can barely even score a decent night out for a hundred clams these days. In fact, we're at the point now where a night at the movies for two with popcorn, soda, and Junior Mints costs roughly $28,000. If Apple really manages to hit the $100 price point with an iPod that isn't too stripped-down as far as function goes, people are going to buy a million of them. Each, even.

Of course, then things get a little... funky. Think Secret corroborates early unconfirmed reports by MacRumors that the miniPods will "come in a variety of colors"-- a gimmick that we figured went out with CRT iMacs, but hey, not everyone's into white and silver, we suppose. The thing is, Think Secret takes things a little further, claiming that the miniPods will be available "in various colors, including stripes." Stripes. That's not actually a color, of course, and normally we might fixate on that error in our charmingly overly-nit-picky fashion, but right now we're just a little too distracted by this visual of an iPod that looks like a pack of Fruit Stripe gum. Somehow we just don't see it possibly being attractive in any way, but we should probably just put our trust in Jon Ive and blithely assume that it's somehow tasteful and appealing, the questionable charm of Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian notwithstanding.

Still, focus on the positive: $100 miniPods! Why, it's almost enough to alleviate the crushing disappointment of Think Secret's assertion that there will be "no new CPU announcements-- either desktop or laptop-- in the upcoming keynote"! After all, after amassing all this holiday debt, who's got two or three grand to blow on a new G5 anyway? But $100 for a miniPod, well, heck... what another hundred smackers on the ol' plastic? They don't even have debtor's prison anymore!

On the Stevenote front, new miniPods and no new desktops or laptops weren't all that Think Secret revealed: we're also supposed to prepare ourselves a "total revamp" of the iLife suite (including new versions of all four of its component applications) and "major announcements related to Xserve." However, details on either of those new developments are left as an exercise for the reader, and personally, we lack the imagination necessary to get all giddy about iMovie 3.5 without someone at least giving us a hint about what might be so special about it. (Tell us there's a working "X-Ray Spex" effect and we'll talk.)

Xserves, on the other hand, we find a little more intriguing, in part because there's no way Apple can make "major announcements" about them without telling us just when the heck they're going to get G5 processors-- at least, not without inciting coast-to-coast riots. G5 Xserve rumors have been making the rounds for just about as long as the G5 itself has been public, and word has it that sales of G4-based Xserves bottomed out hard last summer as buyers held their breath (and their purchase orders) for G5-based updates that most of us just assumed had to come out "any minute now." Needless to say, we're still waiting.

If you regularly keep your ear to the ground (or jammed up against an air duct while hiding in a bathroom stall at One Infinite Loop), you no doubt hear all sorts of interesting and contradictory rumors about G5 Xserves floating around out there. For a while one of the bigger ones was that the 1U rack-mountable server was about to get super-sized to a whopping 3U to accommodate all the cooling junk necessary to keep G5s from bursting into flame. Most of the rumors dealt primarily with the "when" of the situation, since that's the real crux of the matter, and so far we've all been disappointed a bunch of times. (Remember when we were supposed to get G5 Xserves in "early September"?) And less than three weeks ago there were "no reports [that] specifically place the Xserve at Macworld SF," and now that situation's been turned on its ear. But that's what makes this all so interesting.

Well, like we said, there are lots of contradictory rumors about G5 Xserves floating around, and none of them seems particularly trustworthy right now, but for those of you in dire need of a massive dose of unfounded optimism, here's a handful of happy dust in the form of the most deliriously positive Xserve rumors currently making the rounds, regardless of believability! First of all, we hear it's still a 1U form factor, so that's nice. Secondly, the best specs we've yet heard insist that dual 3.0 GHz models are already in use in the field, in a strictly hush-hush capacity. Thirdly, and this is where you'd need some serious self-control not to roll your eyes or burst out giggling, we've actually heard that the G5 Xserves are going to cost no more than what the G4 Xserves will run you right now. (Was that a guffaw? We thought we heard a guffaw.)

Like we said, believe it or don't-- right now, we personally choose to do neither. We just thought you might enjoy a taste of what the optimists are grinning about. We suppose we'll find out on the 6th whether or not those grins were justified.

It's official: if we hear any more smack talk about the iPod's battery, we're going to turn green and swell up and all our clothes will rip and fall off with the exception of our tattered pants, which will have mysteriously turned purple. We've been over the Neistat Brothers' publicity-seeking act of vandalism before, so we're not going to go through all that again, but now that the Neistats are finally getting the national mainstream press coverage they so obviously wanted in the first place (we've recently seen articles in the Washington Post and the New York Post) and faithful viewer Phil points out that Girard Gibbs & De Bartolomeo LLP is even considering filing a class action lawsuit over the issue, we figure a public service announcement is in order to clear up at least some of the misconceptions about the iPod's battery life.

First of all, we're not saying that the Neistats' message is off-base, just that it seems intentionally misleading and controversial, presumably for the sake of boosting the buzz for their filmmaking efforts. Sure, if your iPod is a year and a half old, it's entirely possible that you'll eventually find that you can no longer get it to hold a charge of longer than about twenty minutes. We know, because it happened to us, too. And there is absolutely no question that Apple isn't handling the situation as well as it should; the tech support experience the Neistats went through is something that belongs in the Wintel world, not Apple's. That said, no matter how clearly the Neistats state that they "are in no way affiliated with the pending class action against Apple Computer, Inc. or the law firm of Girard Gibbs & De Bartolomeo LLP," their video almost certainly instigated it.

Well, we mentioned this in passing in a previous scene, but in light of potential legal action, we feel we should mention it again. Ready? We managed to get a two-year-old iPod, one that couldn't hold a charge overnight even when it was turned off, running again at about 70% of its original charge capacity simply by installing a firmware update.

It's true! No replacement battery, third-party or otherwise; no hardware replacement or adjustment of any kind. All we did was search through Apple's support forums and tech notes, which told us that one of the iPod software updates (we forget which; maybe 1.2.6?) addressed a battery life problem, and that several people who had lost most of their battery capacity got it back after doing a restore of their iPods to the new firmware version. It seemed to work for some people and not for others, but after a bit of research, it seemed that most people had luck if they performed the restore after letting their iPod battery discharge to the point where it was completely and totally dead-- meaning, there wasn't even enough charge left to display the battery warning icon when a button was pushed.

So we played our iPod right into the ground, and when it was dead, dead, dead, we plugged it in and did the big, scary restore. (A restore actually wipes all the music and data off the 'Pod, but since the magic of FireWire lets us fill our 5 GB iPod in about ten minutes, it was really no big deal.) When we were done with the update, we threw a little music back on the 'Pod, let it charge for a few hours, unplugged it-- and played it for about six and a half hours straight. And it's been fine ever since. Well, actually, the capacity does keep lessening over time; it's probably down to about five hours, now, but that's to be expected with a battery. It's just that a lot of the "dead" iPod batteries out there probably aren't dead at all-- just resting. Beautiful plumage.

Since we originally mentioned that procedure, we've heard from three AtAT viewers who have resuscitated "dead" iPod batteries the same way, based on our suggestion. So it's not just us. Again, it may not work for everybody, but clearly it works for some people. If you've got an iPod that's similarly afflicted, you might consider trying a restore with the latest iPod software updater after running the battery all the way down-- at least before you plunk down $50 for an install-it-yourself battery or $100 for Apple to do it for you. Or before you join this class action suit that's brewing. Or before you videotape yourself vandalizing Apple's marketing materials.

What we really don't get is why Apple's tech support personnel are apparently not telling people to try this. If it really does fix the problem for even a small subset of afflicted users, it might have been enough to keep the Neistats from going all stencil-happy, and even enough to stave off this potential lawsuit. Whatever. If you've got iPod battery woes, here's hoping this works for you. If it does, Merry Christmas. Use the money you saved on a new battery to buy yourself a shirt.