Okay, guys, first things first: he's fine. So we don't want to hear about distraught Mac fans leaping off of tall buildings or diving into tree-shredders or anything like that, okay? By all accounts, the man is coming through the whole thing most spiffily, so there's absolutely no need to panic and slam your own head repeatedly in your car door. Normally we're all about the melodrama, but in this particular case it'd probably be a good thing if you all just chill. Like we said, the guy's just dandy.

That said, we fully acknowledge that it's more than a little distressing to hear that Steve Jobs had cancer.

Aaaaaand in the response to the thousands of viewers who just regaled us with a simultaneous global "WHAT?! OH NO!!" (yes, we could hear it from here-- in stereo, no less), we'll remind you once again that we said don't panic. Sure, it's alarming news, and we were more than a little freaked out ourselves when faithful viewer Nat Bletter first forwarded us the Reuters article reporting that Steve had just undergone surgery to remove an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor from his pancreas. Not freaked out enough to pass up the "We Told You So™" moment, of course; we knew something was up when we pointed out Steve's sudden unexplained weight loss and his uncharacteristic break in concentration during that Euro iTMS launch event, but it's always a shock when vague nagging fears suddenly crystallize into real, honest-to-goshness bad news. And it's even more of a shock when we're actually right about something.

But like we said, things aren't nearly as bad as they could be; apparently Steve's particular brand of cancer is both extremely rare (at "about 1 percent of the total cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed this year," it's got even lower market share than the Mac does) and extremely treatable if caught early-- which it was. Despite having gone under the knife at some point this weekend, Steve managed to inform the troops of his condition himself, via post-op email sent from his hospital bed thanks to his trusty 17-inch PowerBook. (The man knows how to convalesce in style.) Steve also pointed out that won't need to undergo chemo or radiation therapy, so the surgery sounds like basically a one-and-done. Indeed, His Steveness is only planning to take one month off to recuperate and expects to get back to his mercurial micromanagement duties full-time in September.

In the meantime, you may have to ratchet back your drama plans for a while, because plotwise, it sounds like we've got a largely Steveless Apple ahead of us this month. While he lets his pancreas recover, Steve has turned the reins over to worldwide sales 'n' ops guru Tim Cook for the next four or five weeks. We have total confidence that Tim will handle Apple's day-to-day operations without a hitch (especially since Steve will almost certainly be on the phone every twenty or thirty seconds telling Tim what to do), but we doubt that anyone expects him to carry out his duties with more than, say, 8 or 9 percent of Steve's inimitable flair. Nevertheless, AtAT sources report that Tim is already being fitted for black turtlenecks, jeans, and New Balances, so apparently he plans to give it the ol' college try.

In closing, we expect that several of you will want to send get-well wishes to your favorite cancer-stricken CEO, though we can't help wondering whether he'd find the extra attention heartening or just plain annoying. May we suggest that if you have to flood him with iCards or something, you avoid clogging up his main "sjobs@apple.com" account with under-the-weather bulldogs and instead use the "steve@mac.com" account, which will probably be far less instrumental a tool to him while he's trying to run Apple from his Barcalounger? Personally, we're skipping the iCard thing on the premise that he'll have plenty enough of that stuff to sift through without our contribution-- but on the off-off-off-chance that anyone tuning in out there in TV land happens to be on visiting terms with The Steve, do us a favor and let him know we're all pulling for him down here at the AtAT compound, willya?

Meanwhile, just where the heck have we been, you ask? After all, we said we'd be back last Tuesday, and you're only finally hearing from us on the Monday after that. Well, as it turns out, kids, our announced weeklong "necessity hiatus" ran an extra three or four days due to a "confluence of obstructive factors." One was the onset of some sort of temporary narcolepsy that hit Jack after the extended sleep deprivation he experienced while he scrambled to get a new MacAddict article in before deadline. (Fun fact discovered during a recent five-day stretch during which Jack slept no more than 9.5 hours total: after 41 consecutive hours awake, words shown on an Apple Cinema Display actually start to bend and melt before your very eyes. Screensaver, schmeensaver; that was entertainment, buster.)

So here's the thing: two full weeks after the article was done, Jack is still falling asleep-- a lot-- during seemingly random inopportune and/or comical moments (e.g. while standing in line at the coffee shop, halfway through entering a PIN at the ATM, while holding the Evil Galactic Overlord at blasterpoint, etc.), which is a state sadly unsuited to the rigors of AtAT production. Then it so happened that we flew back to Boston right in the middle of the Democratic National Convention, when the city was so locked down for security reasons that we spent the next four days and nights sitting in traffic, subsisting entirely on ketchup packets and stray Cheerios in and around Anya's car seat. As it turned out, we were never in danger of starving, since there were enough Cheerios in there to feed a family of four for at least six months, but the occasional Froot Loop or Quisp fragment would have really broken up the monotony.

And then we got hooked on Geneforge 2, which is only slightly less addictive than popcorn-flavored crack. Curse you, Spiderweb Software!

Anyway, we're finally back home and mostly functional again, although we're still negotiating the north face of Mount Neglected Stuff, which always seems to get a lot steeper after we leave town for a week. We will say this, though; between the Children's Museum, BoSa Donuts on University near Snelling in Saint Paul, and the delightfully disturbing Mall of America (why doesn't every mall have two Victoria's Secrets, three Sunglass Huts, multiple indoor roller coasters, an underground shark tank, and an Apple Store? Enthusiastic greetings to Warren and the gang!), the Twin Cities have a lot more to offer than just a Mary Tyler Moore statue. As if that weren't enough.

Of course, as always, apparently all sorts of fun stuff happened while we were on the road, of which the biggest was probably RealNetworks resorting to some desperate-- and possibly legally shaky-- measures to keep its RealRhapsody downloadable music service from tanking. No doubt you folks are far more up on the sitch that we are, but in case there's anyone else out there who crawled under a rock for the past fortnight, here's a quick recap: remember when Real CEO Rob Glaser was whining to the press about how Apple's refusal to license its FairPlay digital rights management system was tantamount to Stalinism? And then Rob proposed to Steve that Real and Apple "form a common front against Microsoft in the digital music business" just two weeks later; gee, we wonder why Steve told him to go stream himself?

Well, Real took matters into its own hands last week by announcing Harmony, software that makes RealRhapsody downloads iPod-compatible-- without Apple's permission. According to MacMinute, Apple is "stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod" and is "investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and other laws"; meanwhile, Real claims that Harmony is exempt from the DMCA because the law "explicitly allows the creation of interoperable software." And so a lawsuit is presumably just days or weeks away.

Personally, from a strict revenue standpoint, we can't imagine that Harmony could hurt Apple; the company makes money from iPods, not iTMS sales, so if people who use Rhapsody suddenly find out that they can finally shell out $299 for the world's best portable digital music player and listen to all their Rhapsody tunes, iPod sales go up. Still, if Apple has some grand plan for world domination that requires preventing Rhapsody content from being played on iPods, we suppose it has the right to take whatever legal action it feels is necessary.

Wanna know our favorite part of all this, though? It's the fact that Harmony allegedly arose from Apple's refusal to license FairPlay to third-party companies-- and then just one day after Real dropped the Harmony bomb, Apple and Motorola announced that next-generation Moto mobile phones will be able to play FairPlay-protected iTMS songs. Our only disappointment stems from Steve's press release quote, which was woefully devoid of the phrase "eat it, Glaser," but hey, we can read between the lines.

Say, are you sick to death of the phrase "iPod-killer"? Because frankly, if we had to live the rest of our miserable little lives without ever hearing that term again, we'd probably be okay with that. (Although if we had to choose just one word or phrase to banish from the vernacular for all eternity, we'd probably have to go with "carb.") Ever since the iPod grabbed the world by the ears and dragged it yowling into a new era of portable digital music, competitors have tried to unseat it from the top sales spot by offering less expensive players with better on-paper specs and more features. And it's a sound strategy, right? After all, who wouldn't rather spend $50 less and get everything the iPod offers, plus MP3 recording, more storage space, and twice the battery life? Hence, the flood of "iPod-killers" over the past couple of years.

Much to our surprise, though, consumers aren't taking the bait. Apparently they're far less likely to be tricked into buying cheaper and "better" but poorly-designed MP3 players than cheaper and "better" but poorly-designed personal computers. Go figure. The result? The forty-odd "iPod-killers" that have surfaced in the past two and a half years have generally wound up being iPod-killees, instead, or at best, just bland faces in the crowd. And since the iPod remains so firmly entrenched in the top spot after all this time, we think we see light at the end of the tunnel, and we firmly hope that the media will finally drop the "iPod-killer" misnomer once and for all.

Unfortunately, now we have to contend with a new phrase: "iPod mini-killer." Great.

Yes, MacNN reports that the just-announced Rio Carbon may be the first player to assume the "iPod mini-killer" title, since its spec sheet out-minis the mini in so many ways. The mini has a 4 GB drive; the Carbon has a 5 GB one. The mini has an 8-hour battery; the Carbon's allegedly runs for 20. According to The Register, the Carbon is roughly 10% lighter than the mini and even supports built-in voice recording-- all for the same $249 price tag. Why, with specs like that, of course it's an iPod mini-killer! Especially if Rio can actually make them fast enough for people to actually buy.

Except that Rio, of course, forgot just one crucial feature: the Carbon isn't available in pink. Ooooh, so close! But that single critical error (well, okay, that and maybe the lack of a scroll wheel; we're supposed to navigate through thousands of songs with a directional pad? Trust us, it's bad enough doing it on a TiVo; it's one thing while on the couch, but we're not about to inflict that sort of mental anguish on ourselves while out walking around) will likely be enough to relegate the Carbon to whatever silicon afterlife houses the spirits of failed would-be iPod-killers that died of loneliness on store shelves. Suppose they've got a little Thanksgiving-style kiddie table for the mini-sized casualties?