Why haven't we addressed the latest affliction to strike Apple's product line, you ask? Simple: when it comes to issues of personal health, we're big believers in the "ignore it until it either goes away or someone calls an ambulance" treatment strategy. You know the drill-- either that irregular mole's going to stop getting bigger, fade, and then vanish completely on its own, or eventually it'll grow to the size of a small child and you'll finally drag yourself in to see a doctor who makes heavy use of the phrase "if only we'd caught this sooner." Smart? Heck no. Catering to a remarkable predisposition for denial and an intense dislike for doctors and hospitals in general? Oh my yes.

Which brings us to the "White Spots" syndrome infecting new 15-inch PowerBooks quicker than that delightful monkey virus in Outbreak; we ignored it as long as we could, but now it's totally out of control. For the uninitiated, several owners of aluminum 15-inchers are discovering that their displays have developed patchy lighter areas over time-- not much time, either. Reportedly if you spend even a few days with a 15-inch AlumiBook, the odds are good that you'll wind up seeing spots before your eyes. Heck, some people are seeing them the very first time they power up their new machines. It's an epidemic, we tell you! As faithful viewer jrock suggests, go poke your head into this Apple Discussion thread, which is now serving as a makeshift quarantine. (Put on one of those cool baggy suit-things first.)

Why is this oh-so-alarming? Because while one Apple tech claims that the spots are caused by spacers inside the screen pressing against the back of the LCD panel, we've settled on a far more likely scenario: leprosy.

Yes, leprosy: known to some as "Hansen's Disease" and others as "Biblical Smackdown #12," according to conventional medical wisdom it's never been known to infect a computer display before-- but hey, those doctors just think they're soooooo smart. We figure this is some sort of smiting by the almighty Jobs, visited upon those Mac customers who have displeased him. Seeing as it took Apple a year to get aluminum 15-inchers out the door, which do you think is more likely: even after a year, Apple still shipped hundreds or thousands of units with a show-stopping defect, or Steve is smiting those customers who sinned by considering buying a Wintel instead of waiting? Exactly.

Whatever the cause, Apple recently acknowledged the "issue" and claims to have a cure-- er, fix, except that there's just one problem: there are hundreds of affected PowerBooks out there, including several whose screens have already been replaced three times and the spots kept coming back. Even if Apple does now have the problem licked (eeewwww-- poor choice of words), wait times to have PowerBooks repaired are reportedly hovering in the range of one to two months. Yeesh, that's only a week or so less than the wait at an average doctor's office! And at least in a doctor's waiting room you can pass those two months reading a selection of magazines from 1924 without having to deal with white spots all over the articles. Consider it time in purgatory, folks.