"Hey, AtAT," many of you have asked, "how come you haven't mentioned those oh-so-sneaky iMac G5 spy photos that have been plastered all over the 'net?" Good question, people! After all, as faithful viewer Andy Van Buren points out, even a site as mainstream as CNET has covered the "photos supposedly taken in a Paris airport elevator," and what could be more dramatic than three illicitly-captured images revealing some unknown LCD-based object partially removed from an Apple product box? The whole sordid affair is clearly chock full of intriguey goodness, and as such, ought to be right up our alley. So what gives?

Well, while we admit that the plot, as outlined, has potential, unfortunately there are a few holes in it so wide you could squeeze a circa-2001 Steve Ballmer through them without even greasing him up first. Granted, it's certainly true that the Apple Expo kicks off in Paris tomorrow, complete with a Philnote that would have been a Stevenote if Fearless Leader weren't still nursing a bum pancreas back to health. And we'll freely admit that said Philnote is as likely an event as any for the introduction of that totally reworked third-generation G5-based iMac that Apple had previously promised would surface and ship in September. So given that Apple would presumably ship at least a few demo units to Paris and some freight-hauling employee at Charles de Gaulle could certainly have busted open an Apple box and grabbed a few quick snaps between floors, why haven't we waxed eloquent about these eminently plausible pix that have taken the Mac community by storm?

Answer: because while CNET says they "have not been verified as authentic," we prefer to call them "about as credible as Microsoft video evidence." Specifically, our initial reaction to seeing the photos was to ask, "why did somebody take pictures of a third-party LCD display jammed into a PowerBook box?" Honestly, a quick peek (at, say, MacBidouille for the first two images, and at the .Mac HomePage where all three originally surfaced for the third) is all it takes to see that whatever that LCD-based doohickey is, it doesn't come close to fitting inside the Styrofoam packing block in the PowerBook box. Apple wins awards for its packaging, which is always both beautiful and functional; the idea that the company would stuff an iMac G5 into a box three sizes too small is laughable at best.

Most damning of all is the fact that French airports don't have elevators, instead relying on an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to transport people and objects between floors.

Still not convinced? Well, maybe you'll believe the creator of the photos themselves. Faithful viewer Nigel Tufnel notes that, as reported in an AppleInsider forum post, if you load the third "spy photo" into Photoshop, look at only the blue channel, and mess with the brightness a bit, you can clearly see the words "FAKE FAKE FAKE" next to the box. And if you're going to insist that it's still all just an astounding coincidence, it's clearly time to have your mental health care professional reevaluate your currently prescribed dosage.

It just goes to show that you really have to be careful come keynote season, because fake "spy photos" always come crawling out of the woodwork, purporting to show unreleased Mac hardware in boxes that are too small to contain them sitting on the floors of nonexistent Parisian airport elevators. It happens all the time. On a completely unrelated note, though, look-- a covert snapshot of the new Mac Tablet! This one was taken twenty feet away from a Charles de Gaulle rope-and-pulley shaft, on a not-at-all-suspicious carpeted section of airport-grade hardwood floor. And the device even fits in its alleged box! Gee, how could it not be real?

Okay, we know it ended four months ago and most of you probably have an attention span that lasts about twenty-two minutes (or thirty if you count the commercials), but do you happen to remember the Pepsi iTunes giveaway? C'mon, sure you do: one in three bottles contained a special code that you could type in online to receive a free song from the iTunes Music Store. The promo was launched at the Superbowl and ran until the end of March, even though the bottles with the yellow caps didn't even start showing up in some markets until a week or two before the promotion officially ended.

Indeed, Pepsi was so hamhanded about the way it ran the promotion that, of the 100 million songs to be given away, ridiculously few were ever collected, which is largely what nuked Apple's chances of hitting its "100 million songs downloaded in the iTMS's first year" goal. Heck, we still get the occasional message from a faithful viewer telling us he's just spotted a batch of yellow-capped Pepsi bottles being loaded into a minimart cooler somewhere (way to go, Pepsi-- seven months late but moving fast), so maybe the whole affair isn't as far off in the past as we thought.

So that promo had the potential to be a huge boost for Apple's music initiative, and Pepsi totally botched the whole thing, which led to a lot of grumbling from people within the Apple community who insisted that they would have handled things better. Well, guess what? Now you can finally get up and prove it: faithful viewer Chris Spicer notes that Apple now offers volume discounts on iTMS songs. Yes, you too can "purchase a batch of individual codes, good for redemption of song downloads at the iTunes Music Store" and run your own giveaway.

Ready to show Pepsi a thing or two about how to run a promotion? All you have to do is download Apple's iTunes Volume Song Code Agreement (in Word format-- eeyeeeeeewwwww), fill out the indicated sections, send it in, and wait for Apple to come a-knockin'. Once all the paperwork is squared away and you fork over the cash, Apple will send you a text file full of Pepsiesque redemption codes which you can print on bottlecaps or stick in fortune cookies or distribute in pretty much any manner you see fit.

It gets better: there's a discount involved. Depending on how many codes you purchase, you can qualify for a savings of up to 20% off the standard 99 cents per song. If Pepsi had paid full price for each of those 100 million free downloads upon redemption, as was widely reported at the time, they'd probably be smacking themselves silly right about now. (At least, they would be if they had given away more than the thirty-seven songs that were actually redeemed.) Apple confirms that the Pepsi promo used this very volume purchase program, although while refunds on unused codes are "typically not available," you can bet that Pepsi didn't pay $80 million for its codes, 95% of which went unused; if it had, there would have been riots and lynchings at the company's last shareholders' meeting. (Not there's anything wrong with that.)

So there you have it: how to buy your own batch of iTMS codes. Any catches? Well, duh. For one thing, the minimum purchase is 25,000 songs if you represent a commercial entity, or 10,000 if you're buying on behalf of an institution of higher education, so we're talking about a sizeable chunk of cash up front, here. And if you've got dollar signs in your eyes right now because you're thinking you'll score a bunch of songs at 79 cents each and eBay 'em off in lots at maybe 89 cents apiece, no can do-- Apple is very clear that "iTunes song codes are available for purchase as giveaway items only" and that "song codes may not be re-sold to customers or other third parties." Otherwise, though, we can't wait to see what other companies-- and schools-- start their own giveaways, if only to show Pepsi that it can, in fact, be done in a manner other than that of a concussed tree sloth on acid.

Hands up, how many of you belong to the generation that needs its kids to set its VCRs? That doesn't necessarily apply to you specifically, of course, since not only are you obviously tech-savvy enough to be tuned in to an online soap opera, but you're also enough of a tech nerd to find Apple-flavored drama somehow engaging. But technology advances a lot more quickly than our minds generally do, which leads to some interesting generation gaps as some parents look on befuddled while their kids wire up the home entertainment system like it's pure instinct and then proceed to pound zombies into a fine red mist on their PlayStation 2s.

Given that state of affairs, someone decided it'd be fun to ask kids of today what they'd most like to find "at the end of the rainbow" and then compare the results to what their parents would have said when they were kids. The responses of a thousand participants were tabulated, and the Western Mail (as noted by MacMinute) reports that "the techno generation would prefer a TV and a MiniDisc player to a doll's house or a radio," which is realistically only a shock to you if you happen to be both isolated and ancient enough to believe that you can still buy an armload of penny whistles and moon pies with a shiny nickel and still have enough change left over to catch a double feature over at the Bijou.

The specific results, however, are pretty noteworthy: whereas the most-wished-for item when the adults had been kids was a bicycle, the runaway winner among today's kids was none other than our shiny lil' buddy the iPod. That's right, 22% of kids questioned said their most coveted wish-list item was an iPod, almost half again as many as those who said they most wished for a DVD (15%) and twice as many as those who wanted a mobile phone (11%). (Note that this was apparently a UK survey, which explains why 9% of the kids said they most wished for a MiniDisc player; on this side of the pond a kid would be nearly as likely to say he wanted a swift kick in the jaw.)

Of course, things haven't changed that much in a generation; candy ranked third both among today's kids and those of thirty years ago, and "Pet" only slipped from 7% to 5% in the past three decades, so Fido needn't worry too much. The biggest losers over time were the aforementioned bikes, roller-skates, and pogo sticks, which, combined, made up 40% of the most-wished items among the kids of yesteryear, but now have all vanished from the top ten completely. (Notice how they're all conveyances? Why do kids today need to carry a few thousand songs around in their pockets if they're not going anywhere in the first place?)

With the iPod in the top spot by a wide margin, things look very, very good for Apple this holiday season. We seem to recall that last year the company took its highest estimate for the number of iPods they'd sell and doubled it-- and then still sold out long before demand had been satisfied. May we suggest that this year they quadruple? At least?