When it comes to foretelling the advent of upcoming Macs, longtime viewers know that the AtAT staff has dabbled in the art of precognition in the past, and often with great success. But we're the first to admit that lately we've been loath to don our Prognosticator Hats™ ($24.95, L.L.Bean), for three very important reasons. The first is our concern that messing with the black arts will bring us to ruin, just like Willow on Buffy. (Yes, we take all our moral cues from television. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.) Secondly, the price of soy-based artificial goat entrails has gone through the roof in the past few months, making vegan hieroscopy an expensive hobby. Lastly, and most importantly of all, we really just don't have the time; we're far too busy keeping up with TiVo and the boundless stream of wisdom it imparts.

But in a classic illustration of that age-old maxim "use it or lose it," it appears that we've lost whatever connection we may have once had with the Great Beyond. See, this whole business with Apple rescheduling Steve's Expo keynote to fall a day before the show floor opens made us a tad curious, so we reached for the Ouija board and tried to contact the spirit realm for a few hints about what Sneaky Steve has up his sleeve. But whatever ghost grabbed hold of our little scrying-glass doohickey apparently thought it'd be fun to mess with our heads a bit. (We suspect it was Casper, in a rare snit over that whole used-to-be-Richie-Rich thing.)

See, when we asked it which Mac products would be revised in just over three weeks' time, that stupid Ouija thing pumped out "ALL OF THEM." This, you can imagine, we regarded with extreme skepticism; while any Mac enthusiast with at least three-quarters of a brainstem is fully primed for new iMacs (presumably the long-awaited and long-overdue LCD-based model) and the smart money is also on new Power Macs as well (fast G4s if you're cautiously optimistic, G5s if you're the type who also routinely buys magazine subscriptions to increase your chances of winning the giant check from Ed McMahon), everybody knows that the PowerBook and iBook were each just tuned up a mere two months ago.

Doubting the Ouija's prediction of a three-month product cycle for Apple's portables, we asked it again-- but once again, the darn fool thing insisted that every single Mac on the product grid will be at least tweaked in three weeks' time. We suppose it's possible-- maybe Apple finally found a slot-loading combo drive to stick in the TiBook, and the iBook is getting a slightly bigger screen or something, assuming Apple could cram one into the same enclosure. We asked the spirit for details, but all we got was something about never having had the courage to tell Little Dot how he felt about her.

Until we get something more concrete than some weepy little ghost making vague references to massive and sweeping product revisions, we'll file this one under "Believe It When We See It." Although, come to think of it, an unprecedented full product line-up overhaul does mesh rather nicely with the extra hour tacked onto the Stevenote, as well as the plan to admit press to Apple's booth the day before the riff-raff are allowed in. Hmmm... why do we suddenly have the urge to buy a ton of magazines from the Publishers' Clearing House?