Hey, don't try to get us involved in some kind of Rumor War-- when it comes to confrontations on the web, AtAT likes to play Switzerland. Others can attack Mac OS Rumors from all sides, while we'll just remain stoically neutral and keep making our watches and chocolate. Then again, we suppose we can still tell you all about what's going on without actually choosing sides. Besides, we can never resist an interesting social experiment, and if the test is going to have any kind of valid outcome, it's imperative that people know what's going on.

So here's the scoop. As we mentioned yesterday, Mac OS Rumors posted some info about Apple's allegedly cube-shaped future Power Mac G4 enclosure at the start of the weekend, but by the time we actually visited the site, the content had been replaced by blurbs that said "Pulled at Apple's request." Well, as it turns out, several people still had copies of the nefarious "cube" report dredged out of the depths of their browser caches-- and one of them has posted a copy on Apple's own HomePage servers. However, he hasn't posted it to spread the Gospel According to MOSR; on the contrary, he's trying to prove that Mac OS Rumors lied about being forced to pull the story in hopes of generating credibility-- as in, "if Apple told them to pull it, it must be true!"

You can read "Alan Smithee's" public challenge and decide right away whether or not Mac OS Rumors is a "fraud," or you can wait for the outcome of Alan's little experiment. See, if Apple really demanded that MOSR pull the "cube" report, the company would logically also demand that any copies of that report get pulled from other publicly-accessible sites. Alan's betting that he never hears from Apple about this matter (despite the fact that the allegedly offending article is posted on Apple's very own servers), thus proving that MOSR faked the Apple mandate. Of course, this experiment won't prove a thing unless word gets out about the posted copy, so in the interest of science, we feel obligated to spread the word. Especially since Apple's currently taking a shellacking over at SlashDot by people chastising the company for repressing the truth, or whatever. We'd hate for Apple to take lumps for a "crime" it never actually committed. After all, there are already enough reasons to criticize Apple without people fabricating new ones.

Oh, one more interesting little tidbit: faithful viewer Phil Burk noticed an intriguing story over at The Mac Junkie, in which the author claims to have fabricated details about the cube G4 and sent them to Mac OS Rumors just to see if they'd get published. Sure enough, he claims that his lies showed up on the site on Saturday-- and were subsequently pulled "at Apple's request." Just one more data point to consider, which we pass on in the humble spirit of neutrality. Now if you'll excuse us, we have bank accounts to manage and multiple-tool army knives to assemble.