For those of you still trying to coax some semblance of sense from the Expo keynote's sudden move from Tuesday, January 8th to Monday the 7th, we've got a little more info for you-- but be warned: all it does is muddy the waters even more. We thought we'd hit upon an obvious explanation yesterday when we noticed that by announcing a slew of new products the day before the show floor opened, Apple could do away with various costly and draconian security measures, because all that secret new gear would no longer be secret once Steve had elicited his share of gasps of surprise and delight from the crowd. In other words, why pay for an elite team of snoop-shooting snipers to guard the booth set-up (especially in this economy) when the simple act of holding the keynote a day earlier renders the whole concept of gun-toting booth guards obsolete? Makes perfect sense, right?

There's just one little problem with that theory: Apple still has to set up its booth under intense security against prying eyes-- it just has to do it a day earlier. See, a few AtAT viewers who just happen to be members of the Legitimate Press™ tipped us off to the fact that Apple is planning on letting reporters and analysts into its booth on Monday after the keynote, a full day before the unwashed masses will be admitted. That means that Apple won't be saving a dime from the quarterly sniper budget, because the booth will still need to be packed full of secret goodies before Steve drops his bombshells. So scratch that theory.

If you were banking on the rather pedestrian explanation that the conference organizers mandated the date change to resolve a simple scheduling conflict or something, you can toss that idea out the window as well: MacMinute reports that the move to Monday "was a decision made solely by Apple and Jobs himself, with little input from IDG World Expo." When you think about it, that's hardly surprising, since IDG is probably none too pleased with fielding complaints from dozens of Expo-bound grumps who now have to reschedule flights and extend hotel stays at great personal expense in order to catch the earlybird keynote. Apparently IDG is also frantically trying to reschedule several Power Tools Conferences whose original time slots now overlap Steve's RDF-o-rama. That can't be a lot of fun.

As you can see, there are no easy answers to explain Apple's insistence on moving the keynote up a day. So, in light of all this uncertainty, we have decided to adopt the following as our official explanation for the one-day move: Steve had profound religious objections to delivering a keynote address on the sacrosanct occasion of Elvis's birthday. Ta-daa!! Mystery solved.