Nervous yet? The rumors sites probably are. Here we are, scant days away from Steve Jobs's Macworld Expo keynote, and there's been no word of an official webcast of the event. See, here's the thing; damn near everyone predicted that a slew of new hardware would surface at last month's Expo keynote-- at least the new "Pismo" PowerBook, and probably speed-bumped G4s, too. Some people went so far as to predict the appearance of an Apple-Palm hybrid, a 17" iMac, and a Graphite iBook DV. Instead, what we got was zilch. (Well, okay, not exactly zilch; there was the Internet strategy and Mac OS X, but from a hardware perspective, we're talking "empty set," here.)

So of course, after that, there was the mad scramble by the rumors sites to explain away Pismo's no-show in an attempt to retain some credibility. Maybe Pismo was pulled at the last second due to problems with Mac OS 9.0.1, or continuing overheating problems, or whatever-- but the bottom line was this: no Pismo, sites looked foolish. So what's got everyone furrowing their brows is the whole "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, I'm a real dork" thing. Pismo is such a lock for a Tokyo debut, everyone's staked their reputations on it. So what happens if Pismo is absent once again? Hoo boy...

Now, what's got people squirming is this: on top of the fact that Apple has pretty much never announced major new hardware at an overseas event, Mac OS Rumors has confirmed that there will be no official webcasts or satellite broadcasts of the keynote. Now really, what are the odds that Apple would trot out Pismo for a grand debut in Japan and not even give the U.S. market an option to witness the event live? Doesn't sound likely, does it? Yes, we still think that Pismo will be introduced, but the suspense sure is giving some people's antiperspirants a workout. Heck, we can imagine Steve yanking Pismo just to make the rumors sites sweat.