Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY in the courtyard at One Infinite Loop-- it's the Battle of the Rumors Titans! Don't miss the action as Mac OS Rumors squares off against AppleInsider in a no-holds-barred virtual grudge match over the intro date of Apple's fabled sixth product category. Cheer wildly as contradictory "insider information" butts heads! Wince at the frustrating lack of substantive details or any sort of solid evidence whatsoever! We'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge! (No gambling, please.)

Now that we've chewed through our allotment of exclamation points for the week, we should clarify just what's going on, here. Remember last July, when Steve unveiled the Power Mac G4 Cube as the latest innovation that would have a profound impact on Apple's continued success? (Anyone who's been following the company's stock price knows that he sure wasn't wrong, but that's a whole other mess that's been beaten to death.) Well, at the time, he expanded Apple's product grid from four to six squares-- and the sixth has remained mysteriously vacant ever since. Anyone with a second-grade aptitude for logical thought was able to see that the sixth slot would probably house a portable device analogous to the Cube: smaller and sleeker than the PowerBook and iBook, not quite as feature-heavy as the PowerBook, faster than the iBook, and priced high enough to guarantee "disappointing" initial sales. Personally, we can't wait.

But here's the thing: mere days after AppleInsider reported last week that the long-awaited Mac OS subnotebook is "at least another eight months" away, Mac OS Rumors claimed to have received actual snapshots of a prototype model, and rattled off a few intriguing factoids just to keep us salivating. Of particular interest are the unit's apparent dimensions: "nearly as wide" as today's PowerBook, "slightly more than half as long front-to-back, and just over an inch thick." Now that's a laptop we could tote to Thailand and back without incurring a fortune in chiropractic fees. Too bad we have to wait eight months to see it, right? Nuh-uh... at least, not in the estimation of MOSR, who claims that "production should begin within weeks and we should see this remarkable ultraportable next month" at Macworld Expo.

So who's right? Well, that's what the Mac Rumors Cage Match is all about. But it's not really happening (even metaphorically speaking) on a Sunday; we'll know if MOSR was correct when Steve takes the stage on Tuesday, January 9th. For obvious reasons, we're rooting for MOSR on this one-- even though we personally won't be able to justify getting another laptop for a good long time, we're curious to see whether Apple's learned its lesson on "premium pricing," or if the "CubeBook" will send the company even deeper into its current hole. We're just in it for the drama, baby. Oooh, we suppose that cracks in the casing would be too much to hope for...