It's the holiday season, and everyone's getting into the spirit. That one perpetually bubbly coworker of yours is dressing in red and green every day and singing "Jingle Bells" all day long. The house down the block has so many lights on the yard its raw candlepower per square yardage officially qualifies it as a landing strip. The malls are echoing with the soothing holiday screams of mothers clubbing each other into bloody messes as they duke it out for the last Pokémon Yellow cartridge. It all seems perfect, and yet, even with all this holiday cheer, we couldn't help but feel that something was missing. And we didn't know what it was until it arrived; all we wanted for Christmas was an Imatec press release, and now we've got it. AtAT sends big holiday thanks to faithful viewers fv jim and Neil Cohen for making our season complete.

Yup, our buddy Hanoch "Oh my god, it's December and I haven't issued a press release yet" Shalit is back to his old tricks; while the latest release hasn't yet been posted to his cheesy web site, it's available via CNET. This time he's pointing out how Apple "continues to reduce the market exposure of their ColorSync product because of Imatec's patent lawsuit." Now that's an event worthy of a press release if ever we saw one! ColorSync 3.0 never had an "official launch" and it's only available as part of the Mac OS 9 retail package-- is that because of the lawsuit, as Hanoch claims, or is it Apple's strategy to boost sales of Mac OS 9 in the graphic design industry, paving the way for Mac OS X? Heck, has anyone even tried running ColorSync 3.0 under earlier versions of the Mac OS? For all we know, it may require Mac OS 9 to run properly. Just another case of speculation-as-press-release. (Not that Hanoch's wrong, mind you-- it's just the sheer absurdity of it all that makes us giggle.)

Hey, Hanoch, in the spirit of the season, here's an idea for your next one: "Today Hanoch Shalit was picking lint out of his navel when it dawned on him that Steve Jobs often wears all-black or all-white turtlenecks when addressing the public. Shalit immediately took this as a sign that Apple is downplaying ColorSync because of Imatec's scary lawsuit. And while Shalit was trying to dig his stuck English muffin out of the toaster with a metal fork, it also occurred to him that Apple's elimination of the multicolored Apple logo is obviously yet another indication that the company is scared to death that they'll lose the lawsuit and have to shell out a few billion dollars to some two-bit extortionist." Merry Christmas, Hanoch-- that one's on us.