For the record, folks, no, we don't know what happened to Mac OS Rumors, although judging by the number of viewers writing in to ask, everybody assumes that everyone in the Apple-centric media business gets together to go bowling every Friday. We hate to shatter your illusions, but here at AtAT we're the virtual equivalents of those loner survivalist nuts who hoard bottled water and canned ravioli and poke a shotgun barrel out through the mail slot when the neighborhood kids dare to ring the bell on Halloween. In other words, we aren't very good shmoozers, and as such, we hardly know anyone else in this... well, just for the sake of convenience, let's call it an "industry."

So while we've traded a couple of polite email messages over the past several years, we're hardly MOSR's bestest drinking buddies or anything, and we're just as puzzled by you at that site's sudden and prolonged disappearance. Faithful viewer jg3 pointed out that the registration of MOSR.COM expired a couple of weeks ago, but that's not the trouble-- MACOSRUMORS.COM still has seven months left on the clock, and both addresses still point to the same server. What's more, that server still exists on the 'net; it's just not actually serving any pages.

Our best theory so far is that there's a karmically predetermined and constant level of Mac rumor energy ("rumorgy"?) in the universe during any given era, and right now we're at low tide. AppleInsider's return (if, indeed, the single article posted a week ago heralds an actual return to regular updates and wasn't just some freak posting anomaly) may well be all the rumor the cosmos is currently willing to dish up, thus explaining MOSR's MIA status. This is, however, just a theory.

We suppose we could do the "responsible investigative journalist" thing and just ask MOSR's proprietor why the site is offline, but we won't, for two very important reasons. The first is that any act which resembles an honest-to-goodness factual query of a reliable and named source instead of rampant speculation based entirely on hearsay and tarot cards seems woefully inappropriate, given the circumstances. The second is that we're really, really lazy. (Plus, we have TiVo. 'Nuff said.) Here's hoping that the universe sees fit to apportion a little more Mac rumor energy soon, because when MOSR disappears for too long, we start to get hives.