In the selfless interest of clearing up some of the mystery swirling around the new Pixarian iMac spots-- namely, the question of whether they're just "short films" or actually television commercials-- the AtAT staff is happy to report that we have since spent many grueling hours channel-surfing with a throughput and a finesse that would easily win Olympic gold (if those boneheads in charge would just make it a frickin' sanctioned event, already). As a result of our unparalleled demonstration of skill with the remote control, our answer to the question "what did you watch last night?" is simply this: everything. Accordingly, we're proud to be able to report conclusively that neither of those two iMac films aired at any time on any channel from 7 PM through midnight, EST. (Covering two hundred channels every fifteen seconds for five straight hours? Child's play. You should see us when we're all sugared up on mochas.)

Which means, no-- they're not TV ads. Or at least, they're not being used as such; whether or not they were intended to be is a whole different matter altogether. The fact that the spots aren't currently on the air is something we've been able to confirm with our own eyes (and blazingly fast thumbs), but for anything else we've got to fall back on rumor and hearsay. Lucky for us, then, that various shadowy and unsavory-looking figures emerged while we were icing our trapeziometacarpals and dished all sorts of dirt on the origins of "SuperDrive" and "Dance."

Down yonder in the seamy underbelly of Mac society where such topics are discussed in hushed tones, the buzz is that Steve had this great idea to have Pixar animate a couple of introductory pieces to be shown during last month's iMac-celebratory Stevenote. Apparently Apple's ad agency Chiat-Day wasn't crazy about the idea, but hey, what were they gonna do-- tell Steve "no"? So far so good, but time was short, and Pixar, Chiat-Day, and the post-production company tasked with getting it all pulled together burned through a fairly hefty wad of cash and darn near worked themselves to death in order to get both pieces ready in time for the big day. (Semi-amusing anecdotes of the animation/video production equivalent of the Bataan Death March abound.)

We know what you're thinking: the pieces just weren't ready in time. Not so, say the shadowy ones; against all odds (and probably more than a few labor laws), those scrappy folks met the deadline. So why didn't we see those short films in glorious Expovision a month ago? Well, legend has it that Steve himself gave them the thumbs down at the lastest possible second, fearing that they were too cute, and that people would get entirely the wrong impression-- that the new iMac is just a toy. It was upon hearing this news that the heads of several trench-dwellers (who had foregone sleep for about two straight weeks to get the things out the door) presumably caught fire from the inside.

So no, Virginia, these aren't TV commercials, and Steve apparently even balked at showing them to as Mac-wacky a crowd as a keynote audience for fear of sending the wrong signals. A month later he evidently decided that it was at least safe to show them on the 'net, and there they are. Whew! Sordid stuff. But at least the public finally gets to see what might have been.