Fans who have been tuning in to AtAT for any length of time know that the AtAT staff are big fans of The X-Files, and, like most longtime fans of the show, we were blown away by last Sunday's episode, which finally marked a return to the dark conspiracy theories of previous seasons instead of the "X-Files Lite" flavor that has characterized most of the season so far. But your AtAT staff was stoked for another reason, too, and that is the juicy rumor posted over on O'Grady's PowerPage that the episode may have included a sneak peek at some forthcoming Apple technology.

For those of you who may have taped the show and haven't seen it yet, we don't want to give too much away (especially since we've been guilty of that in the past, and we've been called on it), but a character on the show uses a pen-interface backlit handheld PDA-like device to control the behavior of a nanotechnological "virus" that's in someone's bloodstream. The PDA is also used for text-to-speech purposes when the character places some anonymous phone calls. Well, according to O'Grady's PowerPage, that PDA may in fact be Apple's MacMate, the Newton-replacing handheld that Apple's been promising ever since the Newton was killed. We consider it a long shot-- a really long shot-- but we suppose it's not altogether out of the realm of possibility.

And if the device shown on "The X-Files" was the MacMate, then it's pretty cool indeed. We didn't get a terribly good look at it, but a flip-up antenna was clearly visible; in the show, that antenna was used to control the nanovirus, but in real life, the MacMate has been rumored to include wireless Internet access capabilities. (Although, if the MacMate does ship with the capability to allow the remote-control murder of one's enemies, then Apple may have a real winner on its hands. Talk about a killer app...)