We admit it; while the rampant speculation about Apple's new mouse has been a pleasant diversion from the usual pre-Expo guess-a-thon about clock speeds and screen sizes, we're getting awfully anxious for July 19th to roll around so Uncle Steve can show the thing to the world and people will just shut up about it already. Anyone who's still going on and on about what the new mouse will look like, how many button actions it'll support, whether or not it'll be wireless, how many of them will fit in the average person's mouth, and whether it'll double as a motorized Pez dispenser is wasting time that could be better spent covering the real news going on in the world of Apple. AtAT, for one, will have no part in this senseless rumormongering.

Of course, having said that, and having just been informed that there is no real news happening in the Apple realm right now, we're about to spend some premium airtime filling you in on the latest buzz surrounding Apple's mysterious new input rodent. (Aren't we just full of charming contradictions? It's what makes us so gosh-darned lovable!) First of all, let's tackle the wireless issue: pretty much everybody who waxed lyrical about Apple's incredible wireless mouse has since backpedaled, stating now that Apple is far more likely to ship the thing with a standard USB cord. Mac OS Rumors, in particular, has overtly stated that the wireless version "will not be shipping any time soon" due to cost and availability factors. Sadly, this means that people (particularly those with small children and/or pet spider monkeys) who buy new Macs won't get to engage in that invigorating hide-and-seek game with their new Apple mice that they currently play with their remote controls and car keys. We are, frankly, astonished that Apple's stock has not plummeted upon the breaking of these new rumors.

Next, there's the look. Isn't it great when competing rumors sites get snippy with each other via oblique and veiled references to inaccuracy? For instance, Mac OS Rumors states that "little that has been published on the Mac Web... has been very accurate with regards to exterior appearance." Reading between the lines, we translate this, roughly, into "AppleInsider is obviously mixing prescription drugs and alcohol if they honestly think that Apple would ship a mouse that looks like a lump of silver Play-Doh that got stepped in by a large, declawed dog." AppleInsider, for its part, responded to the vast collective gagging sound made by the Mac community upon seeing the posted 3D images by reiterating that the pictures are just "artist renditions," do not depict a right-handed design, and are simply meant to give a sense of "the overall appearance and style of the new mouse, though the unit is much sleeker and compact in reality." Again, a rough translation might be, "as long as Apple's new mouse looks more like a standard computer mouse than, say, a bactrian camel wearing a fedora, we can still say we were right." Hey, what's a little waffling between friends?