We had once heard that Apple plans to have 400,000 iMacs ready to ship when the hip consumer product first hits store shelves this August. Apparently they're taking that strategy seriously, because their Laguna West facility (which currently builds Power Mac G3's) is looking to hire 400 engineers and assembly line workers. These new worker elves will enable the factory to join Apple's Ireland and Singapore plants in churning out cute blue iMacs to populate the homes of fashion-conscious computer buyers everywhere. Read all about it in the Sacramento Business Journal.

There's no word on how many of those 400 jobs are temporary positions designed just to get Apple over the iMac manufacturing hump. If rumors of build-to-order iMac options turn out to be true, then presumably Apple will need to retain a beefed-up manufacturing presence to deal with the ongoing assembly load. Regardless, we consider it a good sign that Apple's hiring to ensure that iMacs are available when people expect to be able to buy them. (A repeat of the PowerBook G3 Series availability debacle would be a death knell to Apple, at least as far as public image is concerned-- and public image is everything when trying to re-enter a tough market.)

It may be the effects of too much Cartoon Network, but when we think of 400 new little workers putting together cute blue and white iMacs, we can't help but think of Smurfs. But that's just a cross we'll have to learn to bear, I suppose.

Keep bringing on the stats... Just after Ziff-Davis reported that Apple fell from first place to third in customer repurchase loyalty last year, Technology Business Research, Inc. reports that Apple climbed from #15 to #12 in its quarterly Computer Business Quarterly Benchmark Report. TBR attributed Apple's rise to a "stronger product set" and "improved financial results." Sounds good to us.

Of course, TBR's ranking doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot, since they use a "highly quantitative, proprietary benchmarking methodology." That means, we haven't a clue as to how they actually generate the numbers. While TBR claims that their system reflects "critical factors of business success in the computer industry," for all we know, they're throwing darts at a big board covered with numbers. TBR says that "further details are available to accredited journalists;" however, if there's one thing we at AtAT are not, it's journalists. As proof, we did a full-text search on every daily episode of AtAT produced since its debut nine months ago, and the name "Lewinsky" only showed up once. Oh well...

On the plus side, we're considering starting our own proprietary ranking method here at AtAT that will involve a large, numbered grid painted on a football field and several cows let loose to wander where they may. We'll keep you posted.

Many of you probably saw the widespread reports that Intel's main web page included an image showing what were unmistakably Mac windows. If you haven't seen it by now, you're out of luck, as Intel quickly replaced the graphic with one showing Win32 windows instead. Luckily, about a gazillion people grabbed screenshots of the spectacle before Intel was able to change things around. MacNN is hosting one such image.

This incident is just the latest in an ongoing string of "made by Mac" sightings in the PC world, but it resonates strongly because the graphic was used to tout the use of the Pentium II in the creation of multimedia web sites. Ironic much? It justs goes to show you, Intel didn't get to where they are today by using the wrong tool for the job.

This latest sighting takes the place of our last favorite anomaly, which was when viewers discovered that the vast majority of the animated GIFs on Microsoft's site were tagged as having been created with GifBuilder-- a Mac-only GIF animation program. (Unsurprisingly, those were all pulled shortly after the word got out, too.) So now we know that both giants of the Wintel hegemony use Macs to build their web sites, ans-- perhaps more importantly-- they don't want people to know. Very interesting.