So since we've just been lugging boxes and bookshelves for the last four days straight, we're woefully out of the loop when it comes to what's happening in the Mac world these days. As soon as the Macs were in the new place, the first thing we did was get the main AtAT production system online to start feeling our way around again. It was nice to see that Apple stock was still trading over 60. The iMac's first birthday came and went, and while our own funky blue guy (purchased on August 15th of last year) will have to wait to celebrate until we're more unpacked, he's sitting on the floor a few feet away and getting acclimated to the new studios; other iMacs in a more settled environment hopefully whooped up a storm. Apple contributed to the occasion by posting comments of iMac owners from around the globe.

Overall, though, it doesn't look like we missed anything earth-shattering. We were more than a little worried that as soon as we pulled the plug on our connection to the 'net, Steve Jobs would announce that he'd be returning to his home dimension and leaving Larry Ellison in charge or something. Instead, most of the news and rumors out there seems to be the same familiar predictions of when new Apple stuff will debut and what it'll be like. The one particular upcoming Apple technology that really caught our collective eye, though, is this upcoming system software code-named "Borg." We're not big Star Trek fans, but anyone living in modern civilized 'net society should probably possess a level of pop-cultural literacy that includes a working familiarity with the Borg. So if you're not hip to the reference, a simple Sherlock search will turn up a ton of pages like this one; the two phrases to keep in mind are "Resistance is futile" and "You will be assimilated."

With an attitude like that, it's not surprising that Microsoft is the company commonly associated with the Borg, right? So what's up with Apple working on a Mac OS release with such an ominous code name? According to Apple Insider, it seems that the "assimilation" theme is key; Borg is a version of the Mac OS which runs on all Apple hardware based on the new "Single Unified Common Architecture," including the iBook, the new "Kihei" iMac, and the Power Mac G4. By "assimilating" all product lines into a single hardware architecture, Apple should be able to keep costs down while bringing new technologies to all of its systems simultaneously. So there's nothing scary about the "Borg" name. Unless it's just the first stage in Apple's ten-year plan to take over the universe...