Hmmmm, there's just five weeks to go until Macworld Expo San Francisco (also known as "the real Expo," "the One With a Stevenote," "the One That Apple Actually Goes To," "the One With Vendors and Attendees," etc.), which means we're officially entering the Speculation Frenzy Zone. Here's hoping you've carbo-loaded and done your stretching exercises, because there's over a month of high-octane rumor-dishing to endure before we all finally drag ourselves across the finish line and Uncle Steve shows us what he's got wedged way up those long, black sleeves of his. And we can tell you right now that most of that speculation will probably focus on new iPods-- especially the alleged flash-based iPod that some analysts claim is a virtual lock for an Expo debut.

The absolute best flashPod rumor we've yet come across we found via faithful viewer Joao, who directed us to The MacMind for allegedly leaked honest-to-goshness 100 percent bona fide insider info, direct from inside the walls of One Infinite Loop and "confirmed" by a second contact at the company. Based on the 3D mockup the site's posted, the flashPod will be roughly 60 percent the size of an iPod mini and shaped more or less like a Pro Mouse, except only "2.5 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and just .5 inch thick." It's so small it's meant to be worn around the neck-- and the base unit will cost just $99. Even without a hard drive, how did Apple cram everything into such a teensy package and keep the price so low, you ask? Simple: they left out the Click Wheel. And, um, the screen.

That's right; according to The MacMind, the flashPod's entire interface is a single five-way click pad (up, down, left, right, and center) that only allows volume changes, play/pause, and skipping forward and backward through the library one song at a time-- because selecting a song from an onscreen list is about as passé as actually being able to look at boring stats like the song's title, artist, time remaining, and other soul-killing junk like that. Granted, a 1 GB flashPod would only hold about 200-something songs, but still, does anyone else find it incredibly unlikely that Apple would expect its customers to click right 'til their thumbs fall off just to hear track number 249?

After thinking about it for a bit, though, we suppose we could see Apple marketing the flashPod as purely a music device for active folks who just start a playlist and run for an hour or whatever; if so, the lack of a screen to show song titles and the like isn't much of a loss, because who's reading their iPod screens while they jog? And maybe the flashPod only holds a maximum of, say, ten different playlists, and holding down a button on the top of the unit turns the "skip song forward/back" functions into "skip playlist forward/back" instead. If you've got a 256 MB flashPod, you can only hold six albums' worth of music anyway, so why would you need more navigation than being able to skip between them and then skip forward and back through the songs within? After all, that's slightly more control than the iPod's remote gives you, and plenty of people get along fine using that screenless, scroll-less interface once a playlist has been chosen. There's something to be said for a teensy nothing-but-music device that's basically just the remote.

The genius of this whole thing is that Apple gets to market the flashPod as something you buy in addition to a "regular" iPod; the latter holds your full music collection, your contact list, your calendars, etc., while the former is the one you wear around your neck just to listen to a few tunes while jogging or snowboarding or mugging old ladies in the park. We could really see this happening. And sure, maybe it's too early in the season to be surrendering ourselves to credulity already, but hey, what can we say? We practically invented that whole "willing suspension of disbelief" thing.

Okay, so we mentioned the rumors of higher-capacity iPod minis yesterday, and we've covered the freaky screenless flashPod report-- but have you heard these whispers about the iPod becoming a satellite radio receiver when the Expo rolls around? We thought the "iPod Satellite" rumors were laid to rest back in October; they sprang up when XM Radio had a big announcement scheduled for the same day as Apple's last big music press event and word had gotten out that it would be about a handheld XM player. A lot of people put two and two together and figured that XM's handheld would be a new satellite iPod, introduced in a joint announcement-- but of course XM's portable player wound up being the MyFi, and Apple fans got the iPod photo and the iPod U2 Special Edition instead.

Case closed, right? Nope. The rumors are back, folks, only now that XM has the MyFi, this time it's SIRIUS that's reportedly headed to iPodville. Faithful viewer Jim Palmer even heard people talking about it on G4TechTV, and it's being reported more and more frequently, but so far everyone we've seen propagating this rumor seems to link back to a report at MP3newswire.net-- which doesn't appear to cite a source other than "the rumor mill," and says the whole thing is "probably nothing more than someone's clever imagination." So there doesn't seem to be much in the way of evidence supporting the existence of a SIRiPod just yet. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't all spread the bejeezus out of the rumor anyway, right?

Because frankly, even if it turns out that there's absolutely nothing to it, we can see why this rumor refuses to die: it is, after all, a pretty cool idea. Personally, we're not all that interested in satellite radio, because its programming just doesn't strike us as that much more compelling than what's on free radio to justify the expense-- at least, not compared to the perfect-fit programming of an iPod loaded up with a few thousand of our own favorite tunes. (Yes, we live in a bubble, and we like it that way.) But we're sure there are plenty of people out there who'd jump at the chance to shell out an extra $13 a month to have walking-around access to SIRIUS's 120 commercial-free channels of music, sports, news, and more. SIRIUS on an iPod would blow the MyFi clean out of the water, thus becoming SIRIUS's big "Bite Me" to XM-- and it would also let Apple leapfrog the iPod's competition instead of merely playing catch-up, because it would make the FM receivers in those things look like cheesy toys.

Like we said, there's apparently absolutely no evidence whatsoever that SIRIUS programming will soon be available on an iPod, so don't get your hopes up too far. But the synergy of such a team-up sounds good to us in practically every way, especially if Apple gets a percentage of the SIRIUS subscription fees for any iPod users who sign up for the service. And we really do like the idea of an iPod that pulls content from satellites for a change, instead of just beaming your every thought back to them like iPods do now. (You actually listen to your iPod without wearing a tin foil hat? Here's hoping you never think bad thoughts about Steve, or you'll soon be visited by ninjas in the night, and they won't be delivering cookies.)

It's the stuff of legend: the infamous "1984" commercial that kicked off the whole Macintosh phenomenon in, um, well, 1984-- and appropriately enough, during the Super Bowl. (Get it? "Kicked off"? Super Bowl? Ah, never mind.) But in recent years Apple has been largely absent from that orgy of overpriced ads interspersed with occasional footage of big guys wearing helmets and crashing into each other; 1999's airing of the Y2K-themed HAL 9000 ad was the last official Apple commercial to air during the big game-- and we're pretty sure that was Apple's first Super Bowl commercial since 1985 when it aired the way-too-dark-'n'-disturbing-for-the-plebs "Lemmings" ad.

"But AtAT," you protest, "what about last year's 'I Fought The Law' commercial featuring various jailbait RIAA-sued tune-pirates pimping Pepsi's giveaway of 100 million free song downloads (give or take 95 million) from the iTunes Music Store?" Mmm, yeah, well, see, we can't count that, because it wasn't an Apple ad, it was a Pepsi one. Sure, iTunes got plenty of exposure because of it, and the Apple logo figured prominently, but it's just not the same thing. That said, though, we suppose we'd better get used to it, because it's probably the closest thing to a bona fide Apple commercial during the Super Bowl we're ever going to see for a good long while.

There are still plenty of ad spots up for sale, but given the company's track record (three ads in twenty years, and only one in the last eighteen), we just don't see Apple ponying up the cash. Remember, this year was the Mac's twentieth anniversary, and even that momentous occasion didn't prompt a Super Bowl ad, even though Apple's redone "1984" spot (with an iPod digitally added to blonde hammer-tosser Anya Major's shorts) was practically tailor-made for the occasion. There's still two months until next year's game, of course, so Apple might have a change of heart, especially if it's got something amazingly groundbreakingly stunning slated for a Stevenote appearance in January, in which case maybe it hasn't yet bought an ad slot so that no one gets suspicious and wrecks the surprise. But you'll understand if we neglect to hold our breath.

Luckily, we don't have to suffer through a totally Apple-less Super Bowl, because apparently we're going to get an instant (or technically, not-so-instant) replay of last year's game plan: faithful viewer Scott Bradford tipped us off to an article over at MediaWeek which reveals that, "as for Pepsi, look for another spot from Omnicom's TBWA\Chiat\Day, Playa del Rey, Calif., for its iTunes initiative with Apple."

Now, assuming that the report is correct, we find it hard to believe that even Pepsi could be so incompetent and late as to be advertising a promotion that ended about ten months earlier, so you know what this means: another Pepsi-iTunes promotion. Wow. Suppose this is a do-over and this time Pepsi actually plans to distribute all the bottles with iTunes download codes more than a week before the promotion ends? Because that'd be nice. In any case, though, we suppose we should be grateful to Pepsi for getting an Apple presence onscreen during the big game. So whatever the new promo turns out to be, make sure you guzzle enough brown fizzy liquid to fill a bathtub or two, okay?