Ain't it always the way? Every time we get caught up in something non-AtATy that sucks up all of our time so we don't even know what day it is anymore, that's when Apple chooses to pull all sorts of interesting stunts. Take, for example, this past weekend, during which we were locked in a room fighting a deadline for two straight days, without even the time to check our mail. Let's see if we can reconstruct the drama we missed based on the written record of AtAT viewer correspondence, shall we?

Okay, let's see, here... first, at about 2 PM on Saturday, faithful viewer Mike Scherer tried to tell us that Think Secret was predicting new iPods for Monday. Then, seven hours later, faithful viewer Spencer Hales informed us (well, our inbox, anyway) that Newsweek had apparently leaked a photo of the new 'Pod two days early. (Scary man! SCARY MAN WITH SCARY EYES!!) Just slightly over twenty-four hours after that, faithful viewer Michael Wyszomierski was first to send us notification that the Apple Store was down. And at 8:00 Monday morning, faithful viewer AaronS sent us a note about the fourth-gen iPods officially having appeared at the Apple Store.

And then we actually first heard about any of this when faithful viewer Shane Burgess IM'd us to mention it four hours later. Oh, the things we miss when we're racing the clock.

But they're here! The new iPods are here, that's the important thing, and when we finally took a gander at Apple's press release, we were delighted to find that all new iPods are equipped with a slightly larger and equally excellent version of the miniPod Click Wheel, they all boast 50% more battery life (12 hours, up from 8), and they all... um... have the "Shuffle Songs" command on the main menu. We're not entirely sure why Apple thinks that's such a selling point, but okay, whatever.

The interesting thing, though, is that when we've been saying "all" new iPods, we actually meant "both." It seems that Apple has seen fit to drop one model from the lineup, so let's see which one it is. The new 20 GB model costs $299, which is what the low-end 15 GB one used to cost; the new 40 GB iPod goes for $399, the cost of the previous 20 GB unit. So one interpretation is that Apple ditched the low-end 15 GB one and dropped prices on the two larger-capacity models. Another take, though, is that Apple bumped the low-end up to 20 GB, bumped the mid-range up to 40 GB, and-- got rid of the high-end $499 model. Which made us figure, hey, that'll be the 60 GB model that Toshiba leaked a few weeks back, right? They aren't supposed to surface until September, so that's when we'll see the high-end $499 model reappear.

We were so proud of that bit of deductive reasoning, and it turns out that we were wrong, wrong, wrong.

If you were on the same page as us, here's where it all falls apart: faithful viewer David Poves found that, according to MacMinute, Apple veep o' hardware product marketing Greg Joswiak has just gone on the record to state that Apple has "no plans in regard to announcing 60 GB models." Says he, "We are trying to create a much more compelling lineup with two models for 20 and 40 GB at extremely compelling prices." Granted, that's not strictly a denial, but it's enough to assume he's not just being tricky. (On the plus side, let the speculation commence about what the 60 GB teeny-drives Apple allegedly ordered from Toshiba are for, if not iPods. "Oooo, Apple PDA!! Apple PDA!!")

Incidentally, we're still in crazed mode with much too much to do before we leave town Wednesday morning, so consider this official notification that AtAT will be on "Necessity Hiatus" for a week starting now. What that means is that we're still hoping to broadcast new weekday episodes as usual, but that since we have so little control over our own time and resources while on the road, we may simply have to bail on one or more (or all) days. May we suggest that you plug our RSS feed into your aggregator of choice so you'll know when we manage to get new drama on the air? And if the worst-case scenario comes to pass (well, not the very worst, obviously), we'll see you in a week. Hang in there...