Oh, thank sweet Steve above; what with AppleInsider not having dished any dirt since December, the Naked Mole Rat being two months into an apparent hibernation, Mac OS Rumors missing in action for the past two weeks, and SpyMac being... well... SpyMac, we were getting so starved for juice that we were about to take a shovel to our own craniums rather than live another rumorless day. After all, true rumor hounds can't subsist on Think Secret alone.

So from our own sweaty-palmed perspective, Mac OS Rumors's return to the airwaves today comes just in the nick of time-- and the grand-daddy of all rumors sites is clearly making up for lost time by toting a bagful of whispers about Apple's next "Digital Hub" device. No, it's not an iCam, according to MOSR; while Apple allegedly is working on one of those, it's not going to be released until next year, because in its current state it's "not sufficiently superior to offerings from dedicated camera makers." Remember, when the iPod emerged last year with its teensy form factor, roomy storage capacity, blazingly fast transfer speeds, elegant interface, and no-brainer iTunes integration, it fairly managed to make the existing MP3 players on the market look like somebody's idea of a cruel joke. Apparently Apple wants the same sort of reaction when it releases the iCam.

Instead, MOSR insists that we can next look forward to-- and the old "Columbus" rumor veterans are just going to love this-- an Apple "set-top box." Yup, come the holidays, MOSR claims that we're all going to be clamoring for Apple's answer to TiVo on steroids. In addition to being a hard-disk-based TV recording system, Apple's as-yet-unnamed device would also include a SuperDrive for burning DVDs of recorded material, as well as for playing regular audio and MP3 CDs. Rumored extras in the pipeline for the first or future iterations of the product (which we think we're going to refer to as "iCletus," just for the sake of nomenclatural convenience) include AirPort support, file-server capabilities, Gigabit Ethernet, 800 Mbps FireWire, and "the ability to skip over advertisements while recording television shows." Hey, even if it can only skip the Dell commercials, we'll buy two.

Normally, we'd be pretty skeptical of this phoenix-like rebirth of the classic Apple set-top box rumors, but at this point we're so starved for this sort of content, we're ready to believe just about anything. Memo to Xtrem: that means now would be a good time to re-form and announce a quad-processor 2 GHz G5 "XtremlyXtremMac" with an enclosure shaped like a giant Squeeze Barrel™ of Plochman's mustard. Seriously, we welcome you.