Aside from Steve Jobs's infuriating decision not to run and his public endorsement of Algor for President and CEO of U.S.A. Inc., there was one other overt Apple connection to the election coverage: a brand spankin' new Apple commercial which took the whole Mac-using community by surprise. At first we thought we might have imagined it, what with sleep-deprivation-related hallucinations being somewhat commonplace around the AtAT studios, but after seeing it, oh, five or six times in one night (and receiving independent confirmation from a couple of faithful viewers), we decided that it was in fact a real thing.

Part of the reason we weren't sure was because this latest commercial welcomes Jeff Goldblum back to his traditional role as iMac spokesperson. Those of you who aren't Goldblum fans are probably cursing the end of the actors' strike right about now, but trust us, it's probably a great thing that Jeff's back and hawking Macs. Remember how well Apple did when the first Goldblum ads were in rotation? Okay, now consider Apple's performance after the last round of Jeffless commercials for the new iMacs and the Cube: iMac sales are slow, and Cube sales are abysmal. It's all about the Jeff, people!

As for the commercial itself, just as with the recent "Mac.com" ad, Apple continues to try and focus on the real things you can do with an iMac instead of the fact that it happens to look gorgeous. This time around, Mr. Goldblum describes all the cool video editing that normal people can do with a digital camcorder and an iMac powered by iMovie 2. While it's a little "blah" for our tastes (oooh, you can speed footage up, slow it down, and add music! Stop, you're killing us with excitement!) and is at least mildly misleading (Jeff says you need an "iMac," not an "iMac DV," so we wonder how many people will buy the $799 dealie for video editing only to discover that they should have read the fine print), it's a decent effort. Although we would have liked to see more of iMovie's "gee-whiz" features like transitions and titles, plus some clarification that once you're done, you can send the footage back out to the camera and thence to tape; the commercial implies that you just watch your edited footage on the iMac's screen, which isn't nearly as interesting.

Anyway, it's a new Apple ad, and it's in heavy rotation, so let's see how it performs. At last check, Apple still hadn't posted a QuickTime version to the Ads page, but we expect that'll change later today. And if not, don't worry-- watch NBC for eight or ten seconds and you'll probably see it live and in person. Here's hoping that Apple finds a happy holiday buying season under the tree next month...