Oh, it's so tempting to get our hopes up, but we've been burned on this before, so we're going to do our best to restrain our expectations. By now you've undoubtedly heard that Apple has set a press event for May 1st, and that most people in the business of predicting this sort of thing are expecting Steve to unveil a new iBook. Believe it, people, because the channel is drier than a Saltine-and-sawdust sandwich right now, and even the Apple Store lists both iBook configurations as "Temporarily Unavailable." If we were betting types, we'd be very comfortable calling this a sure thing.

The part that we're not so sure of is just what the new iBook will turn out to be. According to the little birds chirping around AtAT headquarters (and, incidentally, nesting in our air conditioner), we should expect a single configuration and color, a 500 MHz G3 processor, a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive build-to-order option, and-- most disappointingly-- a 12.1-inch screen. But what do birds know? We can't imagine Apple shipping just one configuration of any new Mac, and the company hasn't had a consumer model sans color choice since 1998.

So our skepticism in the birdsong emanating from our air conditioner has us in a receptive mood, which is dangerous considering the red-hot dirt being dished over at Go2Mac. If those folks are correct, then the new iBook (code-named "Marble") may indeed have a 12.1-inch screen-- but only because the whole unit is barely larger than that in the first place. Yes, people, whereas the current iBook is one whopper of a laptop, rumor has it that the "iBook 2" is a mere slip of a thing: "thin and light and almost nothing like the bulbous rounded enclosure of the original iBook." In other words, Apple may finally be leaping back into the subnotebook market it abandoned with the demise of the PowerBook 2400. Pardon us while we drool on ourselves.

But like we said, we're trying to keep our expectations under control, because we've heard all this before-- when the original iBook was still kicking around in Apple's labs. Back then, most people expected "P1" (as it was then called) to be a four-pound subnotebook, so when Uncle Steve proudly hefted his new 6.7-pound baby onstage at the July Macworld Expo in '99, we were just a smidge disappointed that Apple's "kid-friendly" laptop was even bigger than the then-current PowerBook (and, uh, most kids). Oh, and remember how P1 was allegedly going to cost under a thousand bucks, and then debuted at $1599 instead? If so, then you'll probably find Go2Mac's reported price for the entry-level Marble a little familiar, too: $999. So you can understand our reticence, because this has all the earmarks of a Rumor Crying Wolf.

But just because we're skeptical doesn't mean we can't hope...