Apple Recon is trying to put a stop to the "Columbus is a hoax" rumors once and for all. While they have so far refused to release their voluminous "evidence" that the AMP is very real, they do point to today's "Heard on the Street" column in the Wall Street Journal, which mentions both Apple's recent stock rally and the potential significance of the Columbus project. The particular quote to which they refer states that "Apple officials have confirmed Columbus' existence, though they have declined to discuss details."

Now, we at AtAT aren't readers of the Wall Street Journal. (In our happy and sheltered little world, a newspaper is only good for two things: comics, and birdcage lining. And given that we don't have any birds, any newspaper without comics is therefore pretty much useless to us.) So we can't comment on the article directly. But it's nice to hear someone say that someone else said that unnamed Apple officials said that Columbus is real. And now you're hearing us say that someone else said that they saw someone reporting that someone at Apple said that Columbus is real. So that pretty much clears that up.

Now that we're all in agreement that Columbus is real, we can get back to speculating about just what it is. To the best of our knowledge, the only Apple representative who's spoken publicly about the project is Steve Jobs himself, who referred to it as an "anti-gravity technology." We suppose that the more skeptical among you might assume that was a joke, so you probably accept the general wisdom that the AMP is actually a set-top computer/internet device/digital media player. If so, you might be interested in this other little tidbit over at Recon, which describes the pictures of the AMP which they refuse to release, and also mentions that Sony and other TV manufacturers are considering building AMP's right into their television sets, assuming that Apple would ever consent to a licensing agreement. Wouldn't that be a coup? Talk about potential market share...

Where, oh where are those new Powerbooks? Following Apple's discontinuing of their whole Powerbook line last weekend (with the exception of the 1400/166), we felt certain that the Wall Street, Main Street, and Mighty Cat models would debut this week. However, they failed to materialize on Monday, as we'd so optimistically hoped, and then still remained stubbornly unannounced following yesterday's Seybold keynote. And since then, reports have been flooding into the AtAT studio about the availability of these new portables; the problem is, all of this mail falls into one of two distinct categories.

The first faction claims that the new Powerbooks will not be available until May, for various reasons. Since Apple has this new policy of not announcing new products until they are able to ship them (Apple Studio Display notwithstanding), that means we may not hear anything from Apple on these systems for another six to eight weeks, which is a heck of a long time to spend with only a single low-end laptop on the price list.

The second faction maintains that the new Powerbooks will be announced by the end of next week at the absolute latest. We'd much rather believe that scenario, but we're starting to think that the announcement was supposed to have been made at Seybold, but some unforeseen delay in production (critical bug found at the last minute, perhaps?) threw a wrench into the works. Still, we'll keep our fingers crossed for an announcement next week. Not that we'd personally have much to gain from it-- we won't be able to justify replacing our trusty Duo 280c for quite a while yet. We just want to see this new Powerbook that's rumored to beat the new 300 MHz G3 in raw performance.

Just a quick bit about the rumored Quicktime licensing brouhaha that's coming to a head in Cupertino. In case you haven't heard, multiple sources (including Apple Recon and MacInTouch) have been talking about this for a while now; if the rumors are true, it seems that Apple is trying to change their licensing agreements in some way that would affect everybody who wants to ship a product with even a single Quicktime movie on it.

MacInTouch today included a note from a reader who states that his company has a couple of projects that are done and ready to deliver, but are being held up due to the way that all Quicktime licensing is currently "on hold." That certainly implies that something's going on. Whether or not it's a proposed change as severe as requiring licensing fees from anyone shipping a product that includes Quicktime footage still remains to be seen, but these licensing issues are reportedly one factor holding up the delivery of Quicktime 3.0.

For the record, AtAT sincerely hopes that Apple isn't considering trying to gouge some cash out of every Tom, Dick, and Harriet that wants to put a Quicktime movie in their product. Quicktime is the one technology Apple has that really stands a terrific chance of being an industry standard; endangering that by raising fees in order to make a quick pile of cash would be a poor move, in our opinion. But we have every faith that Apple wouldn't try something so shortsighted.