So there we were at a mall on Monday (merely "a mall," as opposed to "The Mall", because "The Mall" lacks a Borders and we had gift cards to burn), doing our President's Day duty by consuming instead of producing, when we decided, hey, let's take a quick turn through the Apple Store-- the miniPods are supposed to be out this month and the month is more than half over, so we've got better than even odds of finally getting to see one of the little pups in person. It was a no-go, of course, but we were gratified to see the store just packed with patriotic shoppers, lines at both registers, and a widescreen iMac being loaded onto a handtruck for its trip down to the parking garage. Oh, and by overhearing multiple store employees tell eager consumers that the miniPods would finally appear this coming Friday.

Not that we had any reason to doubt the truth of what the salesfolk were doling out, of course, just as we had no particular reason to disbelieve a handful of reports that miniPod preorders had already started shipping to some lucky customers earlier in the week, but we're still glad to see Apple officially confirming both facts in one tidy press release. Well, okay, the bit about preorders already starting to ship isn't really confirmed except in the vague title of "Apple Ships New iPod mini" (Read between the lines! It counts!), but the bit about the Friday debut is now etched in stone: miniPods "will be available on Friday, February 20th at 6:00 PM at the Apple Store, Apple's retail stores, and Apple Authorized Resellers throughout the U.S." (Sorry, Europe-dwellers; it's still April for you. But at least the ship date hasn't slid later. Yet.)

And lookee here, sports fans-- there's another tender morsel o' dirt in that press release. If you were one of the Apple-watchers concerned that the miniPod might pull a Cube by garnering all sorts of rave reviews and then never finding its market and selling about as briskly as TiVos to the Amish, you'll be pleased to hear that Apple has racked up orders for 100,000 of them already, and they aren't even in stores yet. Steve apparently wasn't on-hand to give a snappy quote (too busy fomenting revolution at Disney, no doubt), but the ever-lovin' Phil Schiller kindly took the Sound Bite reins to assure us all that "the response to iPod mini has been off the charts." With 100,000 miniPod preorders in six weeks with no retail presence and zero television advertising-- in the month-and-a-half after the holiday shopping season, mind you-- we think Phil's description is probably pretty on-target.

All that's left, we suppose, is to wait until Friday evening so we can check one of the things out up close and personal to see what all the fuss is about; shame we couldn't get one at a President's Day sale price, though. Incidentally, as for the fate of those Borders gift cards we needed to redeem, we feel strangely compelled to wander way off topic to mention to any possible Hellblazer fans out there that buying and re-reading the Original Sins collection of the first nine issues did not make us any less queasy about the fact that Hollywood has decided to turn the incredibly English John Constantine into an American. Living in L.A. Played by, of all people, Keanu Reeves. (Well, if it must be Keanu, at least they aren't making him do his English accent. Bram Stoker's Dracula, anyone?)

Wow, remember those crazy days when we all used to hang on every little shred of news we could find about Motorola? Back when the G4 was the heavy hitter in Apple's processor line-up, sales of high-margin Power Macs lived and died-- mostly died-- by the development progress and delivery dates of Motorola's chipmaking division. You may well have worked hard to repress all memory of those years, but allow us to reopen a few ragged wounds by reminding you of the infamous G4 Speed Dump, when Apple was forced to lower processor speeds in its Power Mac line to accommodate Motorola's inability to meet demand. Or the AAPL-scuttling earnings warning Apple issued when missing Motorola chips nuked sales forecasts. Or the way we sat around for a year or two waiting for what turned out to be a measly 50 MHz speed increase. Or, more recently, how the PowerBook line stood stagnant for eons while Apple awaited a Motorolan chip shipment that eventually showed up about a decade late.

Fun times, hmmmm?

Well, these days, everyone's a lot more focused on IBM and the G5, despite the fact that Apple still needs G4s for four out of five of its Mac lines. Why? Because the G5 is the future while, the majority of Mac tech specs notwithstanding, the G4 is increasingly turning into ancient history we can all thankfully forget. Doesn't it just figure, then, that now Motorola decides to spin off its semiconductor business into an independent business that might finally have room to move and grow? Faithful viewer David Poves notes that, according to The Register, the new company will officially call itself Freescale when it breaks free of Motorola proper this spring. Why Freescale, you ask? According to the firm, the name "was chosen to reflect a new focus for the semiconductor company. We've created a name that's intended to identify our team's dedication to agility, service, and reliability."

Oooookay, well, we don't exactly see how "agility, service, and reliability" somehow spring forth from the name "Freescale," and the company's focus is reportedly going to be making semiconductors for the "embedded and communications markets," which sounds like exactly the same focus to us (which is why Apple got screwed repeatedly as it tried to squeeze Motorola for desktop processors), but whatever. If there's the slightest chance that Apple might wind up with a slightly easier time getting hold of G4s for its iMacs, eMacs, iBooks, and PowerBooks, we're all on board and waving cute little "Freescale" pennants-- at least, until Apple finally migrates its entire product line to IBM chips.

Mind you, we're not talking about Apple slapping G5s into $999 iBooks anytime soon, but you might recall rumors of IBM-produced, Altivecked G3s that are actually more powerful than any G4 Motorola has been able to crank out. Between those and the G5s, Apple could theoretically communicate to Motorola-- er, Freescale-- that it can take its processors for the "embedded and communications markets" and embed them where the sun doesn't shine. How's that for a cheery thought to make up for the litany of past nightmares we foisted upon your fragile psyche a few paragraphs back?

Oh, and hey, it gets even better: the move of Apple's G4-based Macs to honest-to-goodness G5 chips may happen sooner than many of us expected. Everyone knows that Apple hopes to have a PowerBook G5 ready by the end of the year (and questionable reports of an unveiling as early as "spring" are still making the rounds), but what about the consumer side of the coin? Well, don't forget that rumors of a 20th-birthday iMac Special Edition with a G5 thumping away in its frosty white dome were pretty trendy leading up to January 24th. Sure, they all turned out to be wrong, but just because the iMac G5 didn't arrive on the Mac's birthday doesn't mean it isn't coming soon. In fact, we're getting increasingly excited about the possibility that the "something huge" coming in April which we mentioned a week or two back might in fact turn out to be the G5ing of the iMac line. Fingers crossed!

Okay, so the stolen Windows source code has been floating around the 'net for about five or six days, now, and so far the leak's biggest consequence appears to be the verification that Microsoft programmers are a bunch of raging potty-mouths with surprisingly good senses of humor. (Older and less-sensitive viewers can scope out some of the R-rated gutter talk at Kuro5hin; many thanks to faithful viewer Lisa Boucher for the tip.) So what about those dire prophesies that access to the Windows source code would enable virus-writers and other 'net bad guys to find and exploit as-yet-unfound security holes and usher in a terrifying era of general security ickiness?

Well, basically, give it time-- it may indeed be coming. As faithful viewer mrmgraphics informed us, while the code's only been out for less than a week, people have already used the code to identify one hole in Internet Explorer 5 and have even cranked out a sample hack that exploits it. According to PC World, simply by visiting a web page that includes a "specially crafted bitmap file," an IE5 user (under Windows only, natch) can wind up at the mercy of an attacker who can then "run arbitrary code on [the] victim's machine." Neat! And okay, sure, the same hole was already plugged in IE6, so the only affected people are folks who didn't upgrade, but IE5 is still officially a supported product, so Microsoft is currently working on a patch and "investigating why it did not fix the vulnerability in those versions before."

As it turns out, the hole was found by the good guys (the benefits of Open Source, anyone?) and the exploit was released as a demonstration of the problem instead of as an earnest attempt to bring the 'net to its virtual knees, so, no, it's not the viral cataclysm some people were predicting. But like we said, it's still early days yet; the fact of the matter is, less than a week after the code first appeared, someone found a hole and exploited it. Thor Larholm of PivX Solutions insists that "this has definitely proven the potential for critical vulnerabilities," so as long as the virus-writers don't get too lazy, the odds of a fairly major source-code-related security nightmare are apparently better than most people might like. Duck and cover, kids!

Meanwhile, the Bagle worm seems to be spreading just fine without any help from the leaked Windows source, so even if no one bothers to use the code to wreak havoc on the Windows-using world at large, Microsoft can rest assured that its customers will likely wind up infected by all sorts of nasty things regardless. Boy, that's a relief, huh?