Is it just us, or do things seem a little slow in Rumorville? More specifically, we're noticing a distinct drought of so-called "inside information" these days-- and so have some of you, judging by the questions you folks send in. Faithful viewer Brian Moon has been "wondering whatever happened to Robert Morgan, the Apple Recon for Investors guy." And faithful viewer Todd Ray wonders "why [we] haven't commented on the absence of Mac The Knife... no new columns in weeks." Are strange things afoot?

Here's what we know. Mac The Knife has, indeed, been very spotty lately; what used to be a weekly spew of obscure pop-culture references revealing juicy Apple leaks has turned into an alarmingly infrequent dribble of obscure pop-culture references usually revealing something like details about minor features in the upcoming version of QuarkXPress. While the article currently posted does feature inside Apple info, it's not exactly timely-- it's predicting what'll happen at last February's Tokyo expo. As for Apple Recon, that hasn't been updated since early January. Morgan's a prolific writer (and one who, we're sure, would hate to be lumped together with admitted rumormongers, but he does have access to inside info, so we include him in the mix), but even his MacWEEK column has slacked off of late, with the most recent article having been posted over a month ago. And being a spiel about DRAM prices, it only mentions Apple in passing.

But how about the other big traders of Cupertino secrets? Well, Apple Insider's last update was a month and a half ago, and it only served to note that Apple's still working on an iBook-inspired "clamshell" PowerBook enclosure-- not exactly news. Mac OS Rumors, on the other hand, is more or less still updated on a daily basis, but a quick glimpse through the posted content for the past couple of months turns up a lot less "secret" data and a lot more vanilla stuff like the current edition, which summarizes Apple's quarterly results and then discusses some kind of high-speed RAM that might someday be used in Power Macs or something. (We lost interest by then.)

Now, these observations are not meant to be taken as criticism of the sites we mentioned, or of the proprietors of said sites. All we want to do is draw your attention to the fact that Apple leaks seem few and far between these days-- either that, or Apple's managed to find some other way to keep the rumors sites quiet. (Need we mention that Mac The Knife is published by MacWEEK, who recently wrangled a positive iReview from Apple? Hmmmm...) Frankly, without uttering the five-letter "n" word (hint: rhymes with "schminja"), let's just say that we're a teensy bit concerned for the welfare of these entertaining and enlightening sites. Of course, if we really wanted to know, we suppose we could just ask all these people what the real deal is. But of course that's nowhere near as fun as rampant speculation...