To those of you complaining incessantly about our just-ending three-week unannounced hiatus: man, you guys are lightweights! First of all, we mentioned several times over the preceding month or two that pesky real-world circumstances would very likely necessitate occasional extended broadcast blackouts, so if you had been paying attention in the first place, you would have stocked up on bottled water and irony supplements to prepare for the inevitable. Second, any grizzled AtAT veteran worth his/her salt will tell you that you should be able to go three weeks without an AtAT fix without so much as breaking a sweat, given that a few years ago we vanished for eleven weeks straight and easily 60 percent of our regular viewing audience still managed to survive-- heck, half of the survivors even retained their sight and/or the use of at least three major limbs. So, you know, suck it up, soldier.

Besides, it's not like anything on the Apple dramascape ever really changes much, right? Case in point: we leave for three weeks to deal with "personal issues," we poke our heads back into the game just to see what's kicking the ball around, and lo and behold, the story of the day is that the Wall Street Journal is claiming that Apple's about to say sayonara to the PowerPC: "two industry executives with knowledge of recent discussions between the companies said Apple will agree to use Intel chips." Ahhhhh... we're home again!

If you've been a Mac user for longer than about ten minutes, "Apple's Switching to Intel!" is a familiar refrain; analysts and pundits are always citing some source or other saying that the migration is inevitable and imminent. Take Rob Enderle, who said that Apple would switch to Intel chips before 2003 was over-- of course, he may not be the best example, since his batting average as far as Apple-based predictions go is so low that it has to be expressed in scientific notation on most calculators. (And yes, we mightily regret having been off the air when the Xbox 360 was officially unveiled, since Enderle swore up and down that it wouldn't be PowerPC-based, and now Microsoft's own specs sheet says "Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU" in black and white. Yes, we missed it. Don't rub it in.)

That's not to say, of course, that there couldn't be something to the rumors this time around; there's semi-credible evidence that Apple had been in talks with Intel about dropping the PowerPC and climbing into bed with Chipzilla, and only finally stuck with the home team because IBM said "hey, check out this PowerPC 970 thingy we just came up with." Since it was allegedly the promise of the G5-as-Uberchip that kept Apple on the PowerPC hook, and the G5 hasn't performed nearly as well as Apple obviously had hoped it would (it was originally supposed to hit 3 GHz by nearly a year ago, remember?), maybe Apple really is looking to level the hardware playing field by switching to Intel. Sure, it's a logistical nightmare to switch processor architectures with 25 million users in the field, but hey, Apple's done it before; granted, 68k-to-PPC wasn't nearly as much of a leap, but it's the same ballpark. Sorta. If you squint.

The bottom line to us, though, is that switching Macs to Intel chips would give Apple a headache so heinous it'd need an Excedrin the size of Montana to tame it, so it'd only take on the challenge if it were absolutely crystal clear that PowerPC is a dead end. Now that the closest thing Microsoft has to its own line of personal computers has just ditched x86 for PowerPC, does that sound likely? So until we hear it from Apple itself (the WSJ says an announcement may come at next month's WWDC), we're going to categorize this whole thing as one more for the crank file.

Not that we're complaining, mind you; when returning from the outside world, the familiarity of a well-worn Apple rumor is as cozy and inviting as a woolly old sock, so it really helps us feel like we've been here all along. And Wall Street's clueless enough about the whole recurring-Intel-rumors thing that the WSJ talking about Macs with Intel Inside™ was enough to send Apple's stock price up a couple of clams, which is always a welcome development 'round these parts. Yes indeedy, it's good to be back...

Meanwhile, whispers of a Big Scary Switch to x86 aren't the only reason things are feeling mighty familiar right about now: they may not come around quite as often as rumors of Intel-based Macs do, but Apple's no stranger to I-got-canned-for-jus'-bein'-me lawsuits, either-- and recently they seem to be all the rage. Why, just a couple of months ago we mentioned that Apple was being sued for wrongful termination by ex-Mac product engineering head honcho Tim Bucher-- remember? He disappeared from One Infinite Loop in mysteriously quiet circumstances last November, and then sicced his lawyers on Apple in March, alleging that the company had illegally axed him due to a "perceived disability" (which, based on a Steve Jobs comment or two, was apparently manic depression). Good times.

If you do remember that kicky lil' plot twist, then you might think we're still in reruns when we tell you that Apple's just been sued for wrongful termination... again. But this is all-new, we assure you-- and if lurking mental illness wasn't a juicy enough alleged motive to hold your interest, check out the headline of the official press release from the Law Offices of Waukeen McCoy: Lesbian Files Sexual Orientation Discrimination Lawsuit Against Apple Computer. Aha-- so that's why Apple ditched the rainbow logo!

The law firm, apparently angling for ratings, calls attention to the fact that this suit "may be one of the largest discrimination lawsuits filed against Apple Computer by a Lesbian." (Think about that for a minute or two.) Still not "Sweeps Month" enough for ya? Well, don't worry, because it gets even better: the complaint has reportedly been amended to add a pinch of "genetic characteristic discrimination" to the sexual orientation discrimination claim already in play. Plaintiff Shaune Patterson alleges that, after she complained that her "white counterparts, who were junior to her," were being paid higher salaries than she was, Apple first suspended her and then kicked her out the door; she also claims that an Apple manager referred to her as a "rather obese-sized black lesbian" in an official memo before she was sacked. (Waukeen McCoy neglects to mention whether or not this suit may be one of the largest discrimination lawsuits filed against Apple by an alleged "rather obese-sized black lesbian," leading us to assume that it failed to crack the Top Five.)

Not that we should be making light of workplace discrimination, of course, which is obviously a very real problem that merits sober thought and serious attention; unfortunately, we're neither mentally nor emotionally equipped to give sober thought and serious attention to any subject, and so if an Apple employee is indeed guilty of having fired Ms. Patterson simply because of her weight, race, and sexual orientation, it's up to Apple to set things right. And when the company tosses said offender out on his/her keister in a classic demonstration of rightful termination, we can crack stupid jokes about that, too. See? We know our place in the universe.

AtAT: an equal opportunity employer. Heck, we're so liberal in our hiring policies that we even have child slave labor (domestic, not off-shore!) on staff; how many 'net-based Apple-flavored soap operas can say that?

And to cap off Massive Sense of Déjà Vu Day, remember when Uncle Steve recently threw a hissy fit over the imminent publication of Young & Simon's iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business? Remember how his wrath took the form of every single Apple retail store being ordered to pull all copies of other books by the same publisher? Remember how this wild 'n' crazy behavior reminded you of how Steve allegedly tried to sink the publication of another unauthorized bio a few years back, Alan Deutschman's The Second Coming of Steve Jobs? Well, if you're the type who actually reads these books, word has it that you've still got a hefty dose of unauthorized bio-related déjà vu headed your way.

See, there's a review of iCon in the San Francisco Chronicle, and it's not particularly favorable-- largely because, due to what we're certain was merely a whopping great coincidence of near-biblical proportions, said review was penned by, um, Alan Deutschman. As in, the guy who wrote Second Coming. And he's less than pleased at some striking similarities between iCon and his own book that brought down the Fury O' Steve lo these many moons ago. Granted, seeing as both books are (allegedly) nonfiction accounts of the same guy's life, you'd expect some pretty hefty overlap, but Deutschman points out that the samenesses go beyond what anyone might reasonably expect when two guys write about the same mercurial CEO; to begin with, iCon's "brief prologue" describes the Macworld Expo crowd's reaction when Steve announced that he'd be Apple's full-time CEO-- which is exactly what Second Coming's prologue did.

A natural choice, you say? Well, okay, maybe... but Deutschman quotes a couple of passages from both iCon and his own earlier book (one's about a meeting at which Disney's Jeff Katzenberg tries to look tough, the other's about Steve throwing a tantrum when someone writes on his whiteboard), and they really do look eerily similar, all the way down to some of the word choice and syntax. Not similar enough to count as outright plagiarism, mind you, but based solely on the passages as quoted, it does look entirely likely to us that Young & Simon's research on Steve's life from 1985 through 2001 may well have consisted primarily of reading Second Coming, highlighting the juicy bits, and then running parts of them through a thesaurus.

So what does this all mean? It means that not only does Steve hate all of his biographers, but also that his biographers apparently hate each other, too. Seeing as there's already way too much hate in the world, may we propose a solution that might help restore the karmic balance of our shared plane of existence? Two words and a hyphenation: unauthorized biographer slap-fight! Let's throw Young, Simon, and Deutschman into a big steel cage and let 'em settle this like savages. (Maybe give Deutschman brass knuckles or something, seeing as it'll be two against one.) When the dust and horrifying red mist settles, the remains of the loser(s) will be served to Steve for breakfast. (Okay, sure, he's vegan, but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate the gesture.) Everybody winds up happy. Or eaten. Whatever.