Heads up, youse guys-- Apple's playing schedule hockey again. No, we don't really know what that means, but what we meant it to mean is that the rumored PowerBook and iBook updates that we've all been expecting this Tuesday may not be coming on Tuesday after all. We've gotten a couple of extremely dodgy reports that the new portables will show up today, instead, but we're putting far more faith in the latest report over at Think Secret, which claims that Apple has shifted the release forward to Wednesday. So, uh, just in case you were planning to throw a party or something, you may want to reschedule.

There are numerous theories as to why Apple decided to wait an extra day before crying havoc and letting loose the 'Books of war; the most prominent is related somewhat to unconfirmed reports of a bellow emanating from Steve Jobs's office on Friday to the effect of "What $@%#ing @#%$% scheduled a @#$%#ing election on our product release day?!" (Steve is well-known for his unearthly talent of pronouncing words composed primarily of non-alphanumeric ASCII characters. It's a gift.) It therefore doesn't seem entirely unlikely that Apple hopes to avoid massive press apathy as new Apple portables might be, inexplicably, upstaged by a bunch of people in suits who are spending obscene amounts of money to persuade citizens of voting age that it's the other guy who's going to raise taxes.

There's also the possibility that Steve decided that the imminent product update (which, again according to Think Secret, is a relatively minor tweak, at least on the iBook front-- 100 more MHz of processor power, albeit with a very attractive $200 price drop) won't be enough to appease rabid Mac fans waiting for something rather more spectacular. As such, he may have decided it unwise to unveil potentially underwhelming new products on a date traditionally associated with burning people in effigy. We imagine he finds enough flaming dummies on his lawn from the Fitts's Law Enforcement Society without inviting the "I need a portable with a SuperDrive or I'm setting fire to something RIGHT NOW" posse to the party as well.

Of course, our own personal theory for the alleged move is that Steve was less than pleased with seeing his original November 5th announcement date plastered all over every rumors site like some sort of rash and simply changed it out of spite. Of course, if that's true, then the November 6th date is in jeopardy, too. Anybody for the 7th?