Wow, things sure are quiet in the Mac realm today, aren't they? Almost... deceptively quiet. It's as if big, invisible gears are turning just beneath the surface of the everyday world, changing the very universe as they rumble ever onward in their inexorable revolutions, undetectable by the same mere mortals who will be forever affected by their progress. Could it be that this stillness we experience, this calm with nary a storm in sight, belies the puissant undercurrents that violently shape the future into which we plunge headlong, unknowing, blind?

Well, no. It's just a slow news day. Get over yourself. Geez.

But since nothing of earth-shattering importance is demanding inclusion in the plot right now, we'd like to update you all on our evolving impression of iChat AV: simply put, it's effin' brilliant, and here's why. On Saturday afternoon, we got a phone call from Anya's Grandma Linda and Grampy Ed, who are living their dream as nomadic RV-dwellers in the arid Southwest. (Hey, it's not our cup of tea, but to each his own.) Now, one of the distinct drawbacks of such a lifestyle is that at any given point in time, they just happen to be at least two thousand miles away from the AtAT compound, which means that the only time Grandma Linda has seen her youngest granddaughter in person was during last year's BabyTour 2002, a foolhardy jaunt across the country that the AtAT staff is unlikely to attempt again in the foreseeable future.

So Grandma Linda's only regular "contact" with Anya consists of checking out photos on her granddaughter's infrequently-updated Mac.com homepage via whatever Internet access might be available at the public library in whichever Southwestern town she happens to be visiting at the time. (Said public libraries invariably have Wintels sans QuickTime, so Grandma doesn't even get to see the video clips.) But that brings us to Saturday's phone call, when Grandma Linda told us that she and Grampy Ed were in a mall in Las Vegas and standing outside a store with a huge glowing white Apple logo out front.

We should probably have mentioned that the Apple retail stores are also effin' brilliant. One of the staff kindly hooked them up with iChat AV on an iSight-equipped PowerBook, and before long, Grandma Linda was seeing her granddaughter for the first time in a year, live and (sortakinda) in person. Sound and video quality were both excellent, and while we've always been skeptical of videoconferencing in the past, this really was the next best thing to being there. iChat AV does a pretty spiffy job of reproducing two of five senses' representations of a face-to-face meeting, and we think Apple showed remarkable perspicacity in choosing sight and sound instead of, say, taste and smell.

Since we were using a Sony DV camcorder instead of an iSight, we were afforded a little more freedom than the traditional two-heads-talking videoconference paradigm, and thanks to the miraculous invention of the 30-foot FireWire cable, we were able to let Grandma and Grampy see-- for their first time ever-- Anya stomping around the compound, and then sitting in her high chair absorbing food through her skin (and, occasionally, through her mouth). And while we were at it, we also popped in the unedited footage of Anya's first birthday party, which they were obviously too distant to attend, so they finally got to see her first baffling experience with chocolate cake.

No, iChat AV is certainly no replacement for the "real thing," but we've now witnessed first-hand just how powerful an experience it can provide when a true face-to-face meeting just isn't possible. Special thanks to whichever staff member at Fashion Show unknowingly helped us out on Saturday by making a grandmother really, really happy. Oh, and for the stridently antisentimental faction of the viewing audience who finds nothing remotely redeeming about iChat AV enabling the long-awaited virtual reunion of a grandmother and granddaughter separated by 2700 miles of dusty road, we should also mention that the night before we had used iChat AV to watch content on our TiVo wirelessly on a PowerBook-- and then let a friend in Tennessee check it out as well. See? It's cool no matter how you look at it.