Oh, thank the patron saint of drug-addled hairless mammals that our long, painful wait is at an end. We speak, of course, of the return of the Naked Mole Rat, that deliriously delirious reincarnation of a certain instance of serrated dinnerware who answered to the name "Mac" over at some now-respectable "serious news site." (Many thanks to MacEdition's CodeBitch for clueing us in to the Rat's safe return.) Even as The Knife, our favorite chemically-treated rumormonger was prone to extended leaves of absence for recuperative purposes, but we admit we were worried (and more than a little strung out) by the Rat's virtual disappearance from the face of the 'net since his last installment way back on August 2nd. After all, he doesn't exactly lead the safest, sanest lifestyle-- and with Steve's anti-rumor patrol setting their phasers on "kill" these days, we were nearly out of our minds with concern.

But banish those worries, for the Rat has returned-- and he carries with him insight and dirt on the ongoing embarrassment of "cracks" forming in some worldly manifestations of Apple's oh-so-chic, oh-so-pricey Power Mac G4 Cube. Rumor has it that those "mold lines," which range from barely noticeable to glaringly ugly from Cube to Cube, are a direct effect of Uncle Steve's unshakeable belief that his Reality Distortion Field gives him the power to bypass the immutable physical laws of the universe. Reportedly several of Apple's own "materials experts" repeatedly tried to warn Steve that the injection molding process "would most certainly result in such imperfections," but he was undeterred and ordered his plans for a crystal-clear polycarbonate sleeve to proceed as planned.

The result, of course, was one big public relations headache; while many Cubes came out looking great, some batches were molded at a temperature that was apparently just slightly too low, thus forming those unsightly "cracks" that have some Cube owners hopping mad. And then news leaked out that Apple would only replace the "cracked" units if the customers kept quiet about the problem... and when Steve himself called one irate Cube owner who threatened to go to the press, the whole situation collapsed into one big stinking mess. While we doubt that the mold lines issue really hurt Cube sales enough to account for Apple's recent earnings warning, it certainly couldn't have helped. In any event, it seems that several of those materials engineers who were vetoed by Steve have since left Apple for greener, less megalomaniacal pastures. What we want to know is, why didn't Steve skip the "clear sleeve" idea entirely, and simply use his powers to make each Cube levitate four inches above the table?