So the iBooks are shipping. And we don't mean the "Steve Jobs announced it at Apple Expo" kind of shipping-- we mean the kind of shipping that actually results in customers getting iBooks into their hot little hands. Reports are flooding in from all over; people are receiving their iBooks, which Federal Express managed to deliver all the way from Taiwan in just two short days, even in the wake of last week's big quake. No doubt about it: the iBook has arrived.

And that means it's time for the advertising to kick in. Apple seems to be going the same route they took with the iMac, with glossy inserts in major consumer-oriented magazines, high-visibility billboards (we just saw an "iMac To Go" one in Boston on Route 93 heading to the airport from the north), and, of course, television commercials. Those of you who've been around for a while are well aware that we in the AtAT staff log more than our fair share of hours in front of what some snooty types will crassly refer to as the "idiot box" (Philistines!), but so far, we've only seen a single showing of an iMac ad. Compared to the virtual bombardment of "Tanks" we've been witnessing for the past several weeks, the iBook ad frequency has been downright anemic, but we expect that frequency to rise meteorically now that the iBooks are actually sort of available. We don't think they're actually in stores yet, though, so maybe we'll be waiting a bit longer before the heavy rotation starts.

In the meantime, you can always see Apple's newly-posted official QuickTime versions of the iBook and AirPort ads. But the truly Apple-savvy AtAT viewers will find something a bit... suspicious about Apple's new "iBook Theater" pages; weren't there four iBook TV commercials, you ask? Why, yes, there were. Ominously, though, two of those seem to have vanished from Apple's radar, leaving the Barry White "Notice the change" ad and the Jeff Goldblum "Possibility of love" ad to stand on their own. Those of you who saw the Macworld Expo keynote address last July probably know why Apple cut the other two ads from the roster; they weren't nearly as popular with the keynote crowd in Steve Jobs' "Applause-o-meter" experiment. Wow, real action from Apple management based on customer feedback-- it really is a new Apple. Granted, it's no built-in microphone for the iBook, but still...