Glory be, hallelujah, we see the light! The light-up rumor lives, and no one's giving thanks more than we are. We've been almost obsessed with the concept of light-up Macs ever since the first erroneous reports from the iMac's surprise unveiling claimed that the whole translucent case glowed eerily while the system was in use. As you all know, the iMac shipped without so much as a light-up mouse (a real feature that was removed early on in the development process), and since then, there's been no end to rumors about upcoming Macs with built-in illumination. The Lombard PowerBook was the first Mac to fulfill the promise; its white Apple logo glows brightly when the unit's on. The iBook's Apple logo also lights up, but it's more understated-- just a dim blue or orange (or grey?) halo when the screen is on.

Anyway, the latest light-up rumor we heard involved Pismo possibly shipping with a glowing keyboard. That turned out to be false, but we're happy to report that the light-up keyboard rumor is still alive and kicking. This time it's AppleInsider to the rescue, claiming that the gnomes in Apple's secret underground labs are in fact experimenting with ways to give the company's laptop keyboards a bit of Indiglo action. Reportedly the latest attempts involve putting "small lights beneath the keys" to illuminate each key from below. See? Translucency isn't just for flash.

And similarly, light-up keys aren't just a "wow" factor, either. Take us, for example; your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff never learned to touch-type, and while we're pretty proficient around a keyboard these days, those little bumps on the D and K mean nothing to us. Home keys? Don't make us laugh. So, yeah, an occasional glance at the keyboard is helpful, and what with our AirPort-equipped iBook making computing in the dark a much more likely scenario, we're really starting to appreciate the potential usefulness of glowing keys. But may we make one suggestion? For the folks out there who can touch type, we'd love to see Apple include a mode in which each key only lights up when it's pressed down. Watching someone type in the dark that way would look so awesome. Like, all Close Encounters and stuff. (We made an iMac out of mashed potatoes at dinner last night. Is that unusual?)