So whaddaya think: is it proof of AtAT's spooky prescience when it comes to all things Apple, or just evidence that if you spout off a couple thousand words a day on the same general subject regardless of whether or not you have anything of substance to say, eventually you'll spew out something that sticks? We speak, of course, of our original mention of the concept of "Mood iMacs" from back in December of 1998, and Apple's much-discussed patent application (as detailed last week by The Mac Observer) describing an "active enclosure for computing device." Or maybe it wasn't even prescience, but a simple case of Apple taking our idea and running with it; after all, Apple's patent application only claims "priority to earlier applications dating back to May 14th, 1999," which is almost six months after we first floated the "Mood iMac" idea. Will we get royalty checks if this technology ever shows up in a shipping Apple product?

Oh, sorry-- we forgot to mention just what it is we're yammering about. See, Apple has filed to patent the concept of sticking arrays of red, green, and blue light-emitting diodes into a computing device housing and then lighting them in different combinations and intensities to produce just about any glowing color your little heart could desire. If you're experiencing a smidge of déjà vu, don't freak out; Apple has filed for a similar patent before, but this new one goes into a bit more detail, and even shows a diagram of what looks like a tabbed System Preferences panel that provides separate settings for "housing illumination," "keyboard illumination," "indicator illumination," etc. The diagram implies a setting whereby your iMac would be green when on and in use, and would pulse blue when it sleeps. It's not a far cry from being able to make it, say, flash red when you have new email or whatever.

There's a decent chance you've seen this sort of thing before-- say, in the USB Christmas Tree, which uses a triple R/G/B LED system to cycle through a whole bunch of colors when the transparent plastic tree is plugged into a USB port. We always regretted that said tree didn't allow the programming of its colors on its host computer, but Apple's Mood iMac would evidently change all that. And who says they'd just use the technology in iMacs? Because the thought of an iPod that could pulse different colors in time with the music it's playing (now that's a Visualizer!) has us reflexively reaching for our wallets as drool practically spurts from various ducts in our mouths.

Of course, the usual caveats about patented technology not necessarily ever making it into shipping products applies, but the iPod mini suggests that Apple is getting tired of the white 'n' grey thing and might be willing to let consumers get funky with a little color again. And while a color-changing Mac is a gimmick, it can be a useful gimmick-- in addition to the "flashing red means new mail" idea mentioned above, what about some shareware that changes your iMac's casing from a healthy green to yellow to orange to an urgent red as your health points get shot away in Unreal Tournament 2004? It's a whole lot more noticeable than a little bar readout on the screen while you're ducking rockets lobbed at your head.

And can you imagine the extra foot traffic that a color-shifting iMac in a window display would bring to the Apple retail stores? Sure, the anti-Apple pundits would write it off as a fad, but who cares? For the sheer excitement and media buzz that it'd bring to the Mac platform, we really hope that Apple does something with this technology, other than letting it sit in a patent application. Especially since we could really use those royalty checks.