Us: "What the heck is that thing?" You: "What thing?" Us: "Why, that Weird Mac Thing on eBay, of course!" It's a flat grey box that looks like it has the footprint of, say, a VCR. It's got an Apple logo on the front, ventilation holes in the top, and a power switch and a slew of ports in the back-- including semi-typical video stuff like RCA audio and video, S-Video out, RF in and out, and SCART, but also some interfaces you won't find in much TV equipment: SCSI, DIN-8 serial, and network ports. The seller claims he got it through an estate sale, and when he plugged it into his TV, some kind of system came up, but he's "not a Mac guy" so he doesn't know what it was. Sounds funky, yes?

People who regularly check out Apple Recon may notice that it looks pretty similar to the photo they posted of a set-top box prototype. Recon, of course, is strutting around doing their "superior dance," since they were a huge proponent of an Apple set-top box, and they took a lot of heat for claiming that Apple had a product in development which then got "Steved." Recon claims that this particular "Weird Mac Thing" at ebay is a "European version of the Apple Interactive TV Box" that would have been seeded around 1995. So now they're doing the "we told you so" thing they do so well and claiming that Apple should never have cancelled the project; they say that since people are bidding high for this thing on eBay, that proves that people want them and "are willing to pay a premium for them." Personally, we consider that logic hideously flawed; after all, the PiPPiN kept consumers away in droves, but these days we bet some Apple collectors would still jump at the chance to blow a grand on a PiPPiN prototype. All the eBay auction proves is that the prototype exists, and that (so far) thirty-two people are willing to pay a premium for some rare Apple memorabilia. (But that's not to say that Recon is wrong-- just that the eBay auction doesn't prove they're right.)

If you're in the market for a "Weird Mac Thing" (and hey, who isn't?), you've got another four days or so to make your bid, but be warned: some people will pay almost anything to get their hands on a rare item with an Apple logo on it. (That's why the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh debuted at something like $7500.) Last we saw, bidding was up to $921, and personally, for that price, we'd think you'd be better off picking up a revision B iMac instead of something that Apple didn't even consider compelling enough to release. Especially when they thought the PiPPiN was compelling enough to release...