Speaking of scary stuff, imagine a world in which access to PowerBooks and iBooks was suddenly restricted. What if you decided you wanted to buy a new Apple portable and suddenly found you'd have to wait, say, a whopping three to five days before getting your hands on the goods? Why, surely you'd start looking behind bushes for Rod Serling, because poignant injustices of that magnitude certainly never occur outside of the Twilight Zone.

Well, don't freak, but faithful viewer Sledgehammer Smythe tells us that this preposterous development has indeed come to pass: according to a report at PowerBookCentral, the online Apple Store is reporting estimated ship times of "3-5 days" on all PowerBooks and iBooks-- a fact we confirmed by loading up our cart with all sorts of nifty gear we can't afford. Sure enough, whereas eMacs, iMacs, and Power Macs are all tagged with "1-2 days" ship times, the portable products are delayed for three to five instead. Outrageous!

So is there a new statute regulating who's allowed to carry a concealed Mac now? If so, perhaps this three-to-five-day delay is a handgun-esque waiting period while Apple performs the necessary background check on its customers. The conventional wisdom, however, interprets the delay as a good thing-- a signal that iBooks and PowerBooks are due for an upgrade any day now, maybe on November 5th, which rumormongers such as MacPlus and the under-new-management AppleInsider have been tossing around as the probable launch date for new portables and new displays.

One note of dissent: Mac OS Rumors asserts that a PowerBook refresh could wait as long as January, and joins AppleInsider in casting doubt on the SuperDrive aspect of a potential next-week PowerBook. According to MOSR, Apple has decided to wait for slot-loading SuperDrives to become available in a couple of months instead of trying to shoehorn an existing (but decidedly less sexy) tray-loading model into the PowerBook now. Assuming that any of this is even moderately true, that would imply that next week's alleged PowerBook won't boast much more than a speed bump, more RAM and storage, and maybe integrated Bluetooth support.

If that indeed comes to pass, we imagine that there will be at least a moderate amount of wailing and teeth-gnashing among the fans, but remember, folks, another SuperDriveless PowerBook isn't the end of the world. Now, the Buffy cartoon being permanently shelved and Amber Benson not returning to the show this season as planned-- that's the end of the world. And cheer up; even if next Tuesday brings us an underwhelming PowerBook or no PowerBook at all, at least there's a new Buffy on tap. So let's keep a little perspective, here.